Computer implemented methods and apparatus for sharing data of an information feed of an online social network

ABSTRACT

Methods, apparatus, systems, and computer program products are disclosed for sharing data of an online social network. In some implementations, a selection of data of an information feed is received. The information feed includes a plurality of feed items configured to be stored on one or more storage mediums and capable of being displayed in a presentation on a display device. The selected data includes at least a portion of one or more of the feed items. A first network communication including the selected data is generated. The generated first network communication is sent to a designated network address via a network.

PRIORITY AND RELATED APPLICATION DATA

This patent document is a continuation of a claims priority toco-pending and commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/413,107, titled “Computer Implemented Methods and Apparatus forSharing Data of an Information Feed of an Online Social Network,” byBedi, filed on Jan. 23, 2017, which is a continuation of and claimspriority to commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 9,591,090, titled “ComputerImplemented Methods and Apparatus for Sharing Data of an InformationFeed of an Online Social Network,” by Bedi, filed on Apr. 25, 2012,which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No.61/526,027, titled “Systems and Methods for Emailing a Social NetworkNewsfeed Object”, by Bedi, filed on Aug. 22, 2011. Each of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 15/413,107, U.S. Pat. No. 9,591,090, and U.S.Provisional Patent Application No. 61/526,027 is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety and for all purposes.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material,which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has noobjection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentor the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and TrademarkOffice patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyrightrights whatsoever.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present application relates generally to providing on-demandservices in an online social network using a database system and, morespecifically, to techniques for sharing information in the online socialnetwork.

BACKGROUND

“Cloud computing” services provide shared resources, software, andinformation to computers and other devices upon request. In cloudcomputing environments, software can be accessible over the Internetrather than installed locally on in-house computer systems. Cloudcomputing typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamicallyscalable and often virtualized resources. Technological details can beabstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, orcontrol over, the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supportsthem.

Database resources can be provided in a cloud computing context.However, using conventional database management techniques, it isdifficult to know about the activity of other users of a database systemin the cloud or other network. For example, the actions of a particularuser, such as a salesperson, on a database resource may be important tothe user's boss. The user can create a report about what the user hasdone and send it to the boss, but such reports may be inefficient, nottimely, and incomplete. Also, it may be difficult to identify otherusers who might benefit from the information in the report.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The included drawings are for illustrative purposes and serve only toprovide examples of possible structures and process operations for thedisclosed inventive systems, apparatus, and methods for sharing data ofan information feed of an online social network. These drawings in noway limit any changes in form and detail that may be made by one skilledin the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosedimplementations.

FIG. 1A shows a block diagram of an example of an environment 10 inwhich an on-demand database service can be used in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 1B shows a block diagram of an example of some implementations ofelements of FIG. 1A and various possible interconnections between theseelements.

FIG. 2A shows a system diagram illustrating an example of architecturalcomponents of an on-demand service environment 200 according to someimplementations.

FIG. 2B shows a system diagram further illustrating an example ofarchitectural components of an on-demand service environment accordingto some implementations.

FIG. 3 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 300 for trackingupdates to a record stored in a database system, performed in accordancewith some implementations.

FIG. 4 shows a block diagram of an example of components of a databasesystem configuration 400 performing a method for tracking an update to arecord according to some implementations.

FIG. 5 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 500 for trackingactions of a user of a database system, performed in accordance withsome implementations.

FIG. 6 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 600 for creating anews feed from messages created by a user about a record or anotheruser, performed in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 7 shows an example of a group feed on a group page according tosome implementations.

FIG. 8 shows an example of a record feed containing a feed trackedupdate, post, and comments according to some implementations.

FIG. 9A shows an example of a plurality of tables that may be used intracking events and creating feeds according to some implementations.

FIG. 9B shows a flowchart of an example of a method 900 forautomatically subscribing a user to an object in a database system,performed in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 10 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1000 for savinginformation to feed tracking tables, performed in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 11 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1100 for reading afeed item as part of generating a feed for display, performed inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 12 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1200 for reading afeed item of a profile feed for display, performed in accordance withsome implementations.

FIG. 13 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1300 of storingevent information for efficient generation of feed items to display in afeed, performed in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 14 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1400 for creating acustom feed for users of a database system using filtering criteria,performed in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 15 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1500 for sharingdata of an information feed, performed in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 16 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1600 for sharingdata of an information feed, performed in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 17 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1700 for determiningwhether a received network communication is authorized, performed inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 18 shows an image of an example of a feed item 1800 as presented inan information feed of a graphical user interface (GUI) on a displaydevice, according to some implementations.

FIG. 19 shows an example of the feed item 1800 with an indicator and amenu as presented in an information feed of a GUI on a display device,according to some implementations.

FIG. 20 shows an image of an example of an overlay window 2000 forentering details about selected information feed data as presented in aGUI on a display device, according to some implementations.

FIG. 21 shows an image of an example of an email communication window2100 of an email service for sending selected information feed data, aspresented in a GUI on a display device, according to someimplementations.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Examples of systems, apparatus, and methods according to the disclosedimplementations are described in this section. These examples are beingprovided solely to add context and aid in the understanding of thedisclosed implementations. It will thus be apparent to one skilled inthe art that implementations may be practiced without some or all ofthese specific details. In other instances, certain process/methodoperations, also referred to herein as “blocks”, have not been describedin detail in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring implementations.Other applications are possible, such that the following examples shouldnot be taken as definitive or limiting either in scope or setting.

In the following detailed description, references are made to theaccompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in whichare shown, by way of illustration, specific implementations. Althoughthese implementations are described in sufficient detail to enable oneskilled in the art to practice the disclosed implementations, it isunderstood that these examples are not limiting, such that otherimplementations may be used and changes may be made without departingfrom their spirit and scope. For example, the blocks of methods shownand described herein are not necessarily performed in the orderindicated. It should also be understood that the methods may includemore or fewer blocks than are indicated. In some implementations, blocksdescribed herein as separate blocks may be combined. Conversely, whatmay be described herein as a single block may be implemented in multipleblocks.

Various implementations described or referenced herein are directed todifferent methods, apparatus, systems, and computer program products forsharing data of an online social network, also referred to herein as asocial networking system. In some online social networks, users canaccess one or more information feeds, which include information updatespresented as feed items, for instance, in a graphical user interface(GUI) of a display device such as the display of a computing device asdescribed below. The information updates can include various socialnetwork data from various sources and can be stored in an on-demanddatabase service environment. In some implementations, the disclosedmethods, apparatus, systems, and computer program products may beconfigured or designed for use in a multi-tenant database environment.

In some implementations, an online social network may allow a user tofollow data objects in the form of records such as cases, accounts, oropportunities, in addition to following individual users and groups ofusers. One example of an online social network is Chatter®, provided bysalesforce.com, inc. of San Francisco, Calif. Such online socialnetworks can be implemented in various settings, includingorganizations, e.g., enterprises such as companies or businesspartnerships, academic institutions, or groups within such anorganization. For instance, Chatter® can be used by employee users in adivision of a business organization to share data, communicate, andcollaborate with each other for various purposes.

The “following” of a record stored in a database, as described ingreater detail below, allows a user to track the progress of thatrecord. Updates to the record, also referred to herein as changes to therecord, can occur and be noted on an information feed such as a recordfeed or a news feed of a user subscribed to the record. With thedisclosed implementations, such record updates are often presented as anitem or entry in the feed. Such a feed item can include a single updateor a collection of individual updates. Information updates presented asfeed items in an information feed can include updates to a record, aswell as other types of updates sometimes in the form of user actions andevents, as described herein. Examples of record updates include fieldchanges in the record, as well as the creation of the record itself.Examples of other types of information updates, which may or may not belinked with a particular record depending on the specific use of theinformation update, include various types of messages such as: posts;multimedia data sent between or among users, for instance, included in,linked, or attached to a post; status updates such as updates to auser's status or updates to the status of a record; uploaded files;indications of a user's personal preferences such as “likes” and“dislikes”; and links to other data or records. Information updates canalso be group-related, such as a change to group status information fora group of which the user is one of several members. A user following,e.g., subscribed to, a record is capable of viewing record updates onthe user's news feed, which can also include the other various types ofinformation updates described above. Any number of users can follow arecord and thus view record updates in this fashion. Some records arepublicly accessible, such that any user can follow the record, whileother records are private, for which appropriate securityclearance/permissions are a prerequisite to a user following the record.

Online social networks are increasingly becoming a common way tofacilitate communication between individuals and groups of individuals,any of whom can be recognized as “users” of a social networking system.In many social networks, individuals may establish connections with oneother, sometimes referred to as “friending” one another. By establishingsuch a connection, one user may be able to see information generated byor associated with another user. For instance, a first user may be ableto see information posted by a second user to the first user's personalsocial network page. One implementation of such a personal socialnetwork page is a user's profile page, for example, in the form of a webpage representing the user's profile. For example, a post submitted bythe second user about the first user can be presented on the firstuser's profile feed, also referred to herein as the user's “wall,” whichcan be displayed on the first user's profile page.

In some implementations, an information feed in the context of a socialnetwork may be a collection of information selected from the socialnetwork for presentation in a user interface. The information presentedin the information feed may include posts to a user's wall or any othertype of information accessible within the social network. A feed itemcan include various types of data including character-based data, audiodata and/or video data. For instance, a post can include text incombination with a JPEG image or animated image. Feed items ininformation feeds such as a user's news feed may include messages, whichcan take the form of: posts comprising textual/character-based userinputs such as words, phrases, statements, questions, emotionalexpressions, and/or symbols; responses to posts, also referred to hereinas “comments”, such as words, phrases, statements, answers, questions,and reactionary emotional expressions and/or symbols; indications ofpersonal preferences which can be submitted as responses to posts orcomments; status updates; and hyperlinks to various documents and/or webpages on the Internet. In other examples, messages can be in the form offile uploads, such as presentations, documents, multimedia files, andthe like.

In some implementations, a news feed may be specific to an individualuser, a group of users, or a data object. For instance, a group of userson a social network may publish a news feed. Members of the group andthe larger social network may view and post to the group news feed inaccordance with a permissions configuration for the news feed and thegroup.

In some implementations, when data such as posts or comments input fromone or more users are submitted to an information feed for a particularuser, group, object, or other construct within a social network, ane-mail notification or other type of notification may be transmitted toall users following the user, group, or object in addition to theposting of the data as a feed item in one or more feeds, such as a newsfeed or a record feed. In some social networks, the occurrence of such anotification is limited to the first instance of a posted input, whichmay form part of a larger conversation. For instance, a notification maybe transmitted for an initial post, but neither for comments on the postnor for follow-up posts related to the initial post. In some otherimplementations, notifications are transmitted for all such messages.

Some implementations of the disclosed systems, apparatus, and methodsare configured to provide sharing of online social network data, forinstance, included in feed items of an information feed, with users whodo not have access to the information feed. Using the disclosedtechniques, feed items of an information feed can be sent via variouscommunications networks, often outside of the online social network. Forexample, using the disclosed techniques, a feed item or combination offeed items can be packaged as an email or other appropriate type ofnetwork communication and, by way of example, emailed to email addressesover the Internet. In another example, a feed item can be formatted as atext communication or attachment to a text communication and sent tocell phone numbers over cellular and other wireless communicationsnetworks. In another example, a feed item is sent as an email or otherInternet communication over the Internet to various web sites andservers having Internet addresses. Such network communications can besent to other wide area network (WAN) addresses and/or local areanetwork (LAN) addresses via appropriate data networks and combinationsthereof. The feed items can include any of the various types of messagesand other information updates as described above, such as but notlimited to: uploaded files; files attached to, included in, or otherwisereferenced in a message; posts; comments; likes and dislikes; textstatus updates; hyperlinks; user commands; and the like.

Using the disclosed techniques, an authorized user of the online socialnetwork and/or organization in which the social network is implemented,who may not have immediate access to the social network, can access dataof an information feed by other communications network channels asdescribed herein. For example, a salesperson employed by a business, OrgA, may be traveling and not be able to immediately access Org A'simplementation of Chatter® over the Internet to view recent updates to adocument or record. Using the disclosed techniques, Chatter® can beconfigured to automatically email or text any pertinent informationupdates to the salesperson's smartphone. In another example, Ted Joe, anauthorized user of Org A's online social network, posts a question on agroup news feed: “what food do you like in the kitchen?” Thirty otherusers of Org A's online social network respond to the post with commentsand likes/dislikes. Using the disclosed techniques, Ted can quicklyselect and email the conversation, including his post and part or all ofthe responses in the group news feed, to Org A's food vendor, so thevendor can then deliver a more appropriate selection of food items atthe next scheduled delivery.

An information feed of an online social network is often configured tobe a near real-time repository of information that can be followedand/or shared among users of the social network, as described herein.Thus, social network data, for instance, in a news feed, is often onlyavailable to authorized users who have access to the social network. Forexample, as mentioned above, some online social networks are specific toa particular organization, such as an enterprise. Chatter® can beconfigured to provide a secure social network within the particularorganization. Thus, in some implementations, messages sent fromauthorized users such as employees of the organization are oftenprivate, e.g., generally confined to the organization and viewable onlyby other users in the form of employees of the same organization orgroup within the organization. Various levels of security can beimplemented to protect the messages from being accessed by unauthorizedentities, such as people not employed by the organization. Thus, forinstance, employees of a company can freely collaborate with each otherby exchanging messages and sharing data, while minimizing the risk ofthe communications being leaked to people outside of the company.

In some implementations, the disclosed techniques provide limitedexposure to data of an online social network of an organization topeople outside of the organization, while maintaining appropriatesecurity restrictions. Some of the disclosed implementations balance anexternal entity's limited access to and visibility of such socialnetwork data with the maintenance of appropriate protection of otherorganizational data, which should remain off-limits to externalentities. In this way, people outside of an organization can desirablycollaborate with people inside of the organization for a limitedpurpose, but the outside entity is blocked from gaining access to theorganization's private or otherwise confidential social network data.

Thus, individual users and groups of an online social networkimplemented in a particular organization can open a conversation toinclude input from entities outside of their organization. In anotherexample, two organizations, Org A and Org B, are partnered for a jointresearch and development project. Employees of the respectiveorganizations desire to collaborate with each other for the project.However, only Org A has implemented an online social network such asChatter®. In this example, Chatter® is configured in Org A to have asecurity model with permissions such that only an Org A employee isgranted permission to access and view user profiles, groups, cases, andother various records of Org A, including any related information feeds.The security model has restrictions to prevent any non-employee of Org Afrom accessing such social network data. Thus, security mechanisms areimplemented to block any current or potential customers of Org A fromlogging into Org A's Chatter® to gain access to the sales-relatedrecords used by Org A's sales agents.

Applying some of the techniques disclosed herein, Chatter® can beconfigured such that Org A employees can share files and other Chatter®data, for instance, in the form of feed items, with Org B employees.Thus, Org A employees can share and discuss pertinent data andeffectively collaborate with Org B employees involved in the project.Org B employees can comment on or otherwise act on shared social networkdata and appreciate the context of the data, for instance, by reading aconversation in the form of a chain of feed items related to the data.Both Org A and Org B employees are able to update and generate new filesincorporating mutual feedback to share with one another and expedite thecollaboration process.

These and other implementations may be embodied in various types ofhardware, software, firmware, and combinations thereof. For example,some techniques disclosed herein may be implemented, at least in part,by computer-readable media that include program instructions, stateinformation, etc., for performing various services and operationsdescribed herein. Examples of program instructions include both machinecode, such as produced by a compiler, and files containing higher-levelcode that may be executed by a computing device such as a server orother data processing apparatus using an interpreter. Examples ofcomputer-readable media include, but are not limited to, magnetic mediasuch as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media suchas CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical media; and hardware devices that arespecially configured to store program instructions, such as read-onlymemory devices (“ROM”) and random access memory (“RAM”) devices. Theseand other features of the disclosed implementations will be described inmore detail below with reference to the associated drawings.

The term “multi-tenant database system” can refer to those systems inwhich various elements of hardware and software of a database system maybe shared by one or more customers. For example, a given applicationserver may simultaneously process requests for a great number ofcustomers, and a given database table may store rows for a potentiallymuch greater number of customers. The term “query plan” generally refersto one or more operations used to access information in a databasesystem.

A “user profile” or “user's profile” is generally configured to storeand maintain data about the user of the database system. The data caninclude general information, such as title, phone number, a photo, abiographical summary, and a status (e.g., text describing what the useris currently doing). As mentioned below, the data can include messagescreated by other users. Where there are multiple tenants, a user istypically associated with a particular tenant. For example, a user couldbe a salesperson of a company, which is a tenant of the database systemthat provides a database service.

The term “record” generally refers to a data entity, such as an instanceof a data object created by a user of the database service, for example,about a particular (actual or potential) business relationship orproject. The data object can have a data structure defined by thedatabase service (a standard object) or defined by a subscriber (customobject). For example, a record can be for a business partner orpotential business partner (e.g., a client, vendor, distributor, etc.)of the user, and can include an entire company, subsidiaries, orcontacts at the company. As another example, a record can be a projectthat the user is working on, such as an opportunity (e.g., a possiblesale) with an existing partner, or a project that the user is trying toget. In one implementation of a multi-tenant database, each record forthe tenants has a unique identifier stored in a common table. A recordhas data fields that are defined by the structure of the object (e.g.,fields of certain data types and purposes). A record can also havecustom fields defined by a user. A field can be another record orinclude links thereto, thereby providing a parent-child relationshipbetween the records.

The terms “information feed” and “feed” are used interchangeably hereinand generally refer to a combination (e.g., a list) of feed items orentries with various types of information and data. Such feed items canbe stored and maintained in one or more database tables, e.g., as rowsin the table(s), that can be accessed to retrieve relevant informationto be presented as part of a displayed feed. The term “feed item” (orfeed element) refers to an item of information, which can be presentedin the feed such as a post submitted by a user. Feed items ofinformation about a user can be presented in a user's profile feed ofthe database, while feed items of information about a record can bepresented in a record feed in the database, by way of example. A profilefeed and a record feed are examples of different information feeds. Asecond user following a first user or record can receive the feed itemsassociated with the first user and the record for display in the seconduser's news feed, which is another type of information feed. In someimplementations, the feed items from any number of followed users andrecords can be combined into a single information feed of a particularuser.

As examples, a feed item can be a message, such as a user-generated postof text data, and a feed tracked update to a record or profile, such asa change to a field of the record. A feed can be a combination ofmessages and feed tracked updates. Messages include text created by auser, and may include other data as well. Examples of messages includeposts, user status updates, and comments. Messages can be created for auser's profile or for a record. Posts can be created by various users,potentially any user, although some restrictions can be applied. As anexample, posts can be made to a wall section of a user's profile page(which can include a number of recent posts) or a section of a recordthat includes multiple posts. The posts can be organized inchronological order when displayed in a graphical user interface (GUI),for instance, on the user's profile page, as part of the user's profilefeed. In contrast to a post, a user status update changes a status of auser and can be made by that user or an administrator. Other similarsections of a user's profile can also include an “About” section. Arecord can also have a status, the update of which can be provided by anowner of the record or other users having suitable write accesspermissions to the record. The owner can be a single user, multipleusers, or a group. In one implementation, there is only one status for arecord.

In one implementation, a comment can be made on any feed item. Inanother implementation, comments are organized as a list explicitly tiedto a particular feed tracked update, post, or status update. In thisimplementation, comments may not be listed in the first layer (in ahierarchal sense) of feed items, but listed as a second layer branchingfrom a particular first layer feed item.

A “feed tracked update,” also referred to herein as a “feed update,” isone type of information update and generally refers to data representingan event. A feed tracked update can include text generated by thedatabase system in response to the event, to be provided as one or morefeed items for possible inclusion in one or more feeds. In oneimplementation, the data can initially be stored, and then the databasesystem can later use the data to create text for describing the event.Both the data and/or the text can be a feed tracked update, as usedherein. In various implementations, an event can be an update of arecord and/or can be triggered by a specific action by a user. Whichactions trigger an event can be configurable. Which events have feedtracked updates created and which feed updates are sent to which userscan also be configurable. Messages and feed updates can be stored as afield or child object of the record. For example, the feed can be storedas a child object of the record.

A “group” is generally a collection of users. In some implementations,the group may be defined as users with a same or similar attribute, orby membership. In one implementation, a “group feed” includes any feeditem about any user in a group. In another implementation, the groupfeed includes feed items that are about the group as a whole. In oneimplementation, the feed items for a group are only posts and comments.

An “entity feed” or “record feed” generally refers to a feed of feeditems about a particular record in the database, such as feed trackedupdates about changes to the record and posts made by users about therecord. An entity feed can be composed of any type of feed item. Such afeed can be displayed on a page such as a web page associated with therecord, e.g., a home page of the record. As used herein, a “profilefeed” is a feed of feed items about a particular user. In oneimplementation, the feed items for a profile feed are posts and commentsthat other users make about or send to the particular user, and statusupdates made by the particular user. Such a profile feed can bedisplayed on a page associated with the particular user. In anotherimplementation, feed items in a profile feed could include posts made bythe particular user and feed tracked updates initiated based on actionsof the particular user.

I. General Overview

Systems, apparatus, and methods are provided for implementing enterpriselevel social and business information networking. Such implementationscan provide more efficient use of a database system. For instance, auser of a database system may not easily know when important informationin the database has changed, e.g., about a project or client.Implementations can provide feed tracked updates about such changes andother events, thereby keeping users informed.

By way of example, a user can update a record (e.g., an opportunity suchas a possible sale of 1000 computers). Once the record update has beenmade, a feed tracked update about the record update can thenautomatically be sent (e.g., in a feed) to anyone subscribing to theopportunity or to the user. Thus, the user does not need to contact amanager regarding the change in the opportunity, since the feed trackedupdate about the update is sent via a feed right to the manager's feedpage (or other page).

Next, mechanisms and methods for providing systems implementingenterprise level social and business information networking will bedescribed with reference to example implementations. First, an overviewof an example database system is described, and then examples oftracking events for a record, actions of a user, and messages about auser or record are described. Various implementations about the datastructure of feeds, customizing feeds, user selection of records andusers to follow, generating feeds, and displaying feeds are alsodescribed.

II. System Overview

FIG. 1A shows a block diagram of an example of an environment 10 inwhich an on-demand database service can be used in accordance with someimplementations. Environment 10 may include user systems 12, network 14,database system 16, processor system 17, application platform 18,network interface 20, tenant data storage 22, system data storage 24,program code 26, and process space 28. In other implementations,environment 10 may not have all of these components and/or may haveother components instead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

Environment 10 is an environment in which an on-demand database serviceexists. User system 12 may be any machine or system that is used by auser to access a database system 16. For example, any of user systems 12can be a handheld computing device, a mobile phone, a laptop computer, awork station, and/or a network of such computing devices. As illustratedin FIG. 1A (and in more detail in FIG. 1B) user systems 12 mightinteract via a network 14 with an on-demand database service, which isimplemented in the example of FIG. 1A as database system 16.

An on-demand database service, such as system 16, is a database systemthat is made available to outside users, who do not need to necessarilybe concerned with building and/or maintaining the database system.Instead, the database system may be available for their use when theusers need the database system, i.e., on the demand of the users. Someon-demand database services may store information from one or moretenants into tables of a common database image to form a multi-tenantdatabase system (MTS). A database image may include one or more databaseobjects. A relational database management system (RDBMS) or theequivalent may execute storage and retrieval of information against thedatabase object(s). Application platform 18 may be a framework thatallows the applications of system 16 to run, such as the hardware and/orsoftware, e.g., the operating system. In some implementations,application platform 18 enables creation, managing and executing one ormore applications developed by the provider of the on-demand databaseservice, users accessing the on-demand database service via user systems12, or third party application developers accessing the on-demanddatabase service via user systems 12.

The users of user systems 12 may differ in their respective capacities,and the capacity of a particular user system 12 might be entirelydetermined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user. Forexample, where a salesperson is using a particular user system 12 tointeract with system 16, that user system has the capacities allotted tothat salesperson. However, while an administrator is using that usersystem to interact with system 16, that user system has the capacitiesallotted to that administrator. In systems with a hierarchical rolemodel, users at one permission level may have access to applications,data, and database information accessible by a lower permission leveluser, but may not have access to certain applications, databaseinformation, and data accessible by a user at a higher permission level.Thus, different users will have different capabilities with regard toaccessing and modifying application and database information, dependingon a user's security or permission level, also called authorization.

Network 14 is any network or combination of networks of devices thatcommunicate with one another. For example, network 14 can be any one orany combination of a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network),telephone network, wireless network, point-to-point network, starnetwork, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriateconfiguration. Network 14 can include a TCP/IP (Transfer ControlProtocol and Internet Protocol) network, such as the global internetworkof networks often referred to as the “Internet” with a capital “I.” TheInternet will be used in many of the examples herein. However, it shouldbe understood that the networks that the present implementations mightuse are not so limited, although TCP/IP is a frequently implementedprotocol.

User systems 12 might communicate with system 16 using TCP/IP and, at ahigher network level, use other common Internet protocols tocommunicate, such as HTTP, FTP, AFS, WAP, etc. In an example where HTTPis used, user system 12 might include an HTTP client commonly referredto as a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP signals to and from anHTTP server at system 16. Such an HTTP server might be implemented asthe sole network interface 20 between system 16 and network 14, butother techniques might be used as well or instead. In someimplementations, the network interface 20 between system 16 and network14 includes load sharing functionality, such as round-robin HTTP requestdistributors to balance loads and distribute incoming HTTP requestsevenly over a plurality of servers. At least for users accessing system16, each of the plurality of servers has access to the MTS' data;however, other alternative configurations may be used instead.

In one implementation, system 16, shown in FIG. 1A, implements aweb-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. For example, inone implementation, system 16 includes application servers configured toimplement and execute CRM software applications as well as providerelated data, code, forms, web pages and other information to and fromuser systems 12 and to store to, and retrieve from, a database systemrelated data, objects, and Webpage content. With a multi-tenant system,data for multiple tenants may be stored in the same physical databaseobject in tenant data storage 22, however, tenant data typically isarranged in the storage medium(s) of tenant data storage 22 so that dataof one tenant is kept logically separate from that of other tenants sothat one tenant does not have access to another tenant's data, unlesssuch data is expressly shared. In certain implementations, system 16implements applications other than, or in addition to, a CRMapplication. For example, system 16 may provide tenant access tomultiple hosted (standard and custom) applications, including a CRMapplication. User (or third party developer) applications, which may ormay not include CRM, may be supported by the application platform 18,which manages creation, storage of the applications into one or moredatabase objects and executing of the applications in a virtual machinein the process space of the system 16.

One arrangement for elements of system 16 is shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B,including a network interface 20, application platform 18, tenant datastorage 22 for tenant data 23, system data storage 24 for system data 25accessible to system 16 and possibly multiple tenants, program code 26for implementing various functions of system 16, and a process space 28for executing MTS system processes and tenant-specific processes, suchas running applications as part of an application hosting service.Additional processes that may execute on system 16 include databaseindexing processes.

Several elements in the system shown in FIG. 1A include conventional,well-known elements that are explained only briefly here. For example,each user system 12 could include a desktop personal computer,workstation, laptop, PDA, cell phone, or any wireless access protocol(WAP) enabled device or any other computing device capable ofinterfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet or other networkconnection. The term “computing device” is also referred to hereinsimply as a “computer”. User system 12 typically runs an HTTP client,e.g., a browsing program, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser,Netscape's Navigator browser, Opera's browser, or a WAP-enabled browserin the case of a cell phone, PDA or other wireless device, or the like,allowing a user (e.g., subscriber of the multi-tenant database system)of user system 12 to access, process and view information, pages andapplications available to it from system 16 over network 14. Each usersystem 12 also typically includes one or more user interface devices,such as a keyboard, a mouse, trackball, touch pad, touch screen, pen orthe like, for interacting with a graphical user interface (GUI) providedby the browser on a display (e.g., a monitor screen, LCD display, etc.)of the computing device in conjunction with pages, forms, applicationsand other information provided by system 16 or other systems or servers.For example, the user interface device can be used to access data andapplications hosted by system 16, and to perform searches on storeddata, and otherwise allow a user to interact with various GUI pages thatmay be presented to a user. As discussed above, implementations aresuitable for use with the Internet, although other networks can be usedinstead of or in addition to the Internet, such as an intranet, anextranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network,any LAN or WAN or the like.

According to one implementation, each user system 12 and all of itscomponents are operator configurable using applications, such as abrowser, including computer code run using a central processing unitsuch as an Intel Pentium® processor or the like. Similarly, system 16(and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) andall of its components might be operator configurable usingapplication(s) including computer code to run using processor system 17,which may be implemented to include a central processing unit, which mayinclude an Intel Pentium® processor or the like, and/or multipleprocessor units. A computer program product implementation includes anon-transitory computer-readable storage medium (media) havinginstructions stored thereon/in, which can be used to program a computingdevice to perform any of the processes/methods of the implementationsdescribed herein. Computer program code 26 for operating and configuringsystem 16 to intercommunicate and to process web pages, applications andother data and media content as described herein is preferablydownloadable and stored on a hard disk, but the entire program code, orportions thereof, may also be stored in any other volatile ornon-volatile memory medium or device as is well known, such as a ROM orRAM, or provided on any media capable of storing program code, such asany type of rotating media including floppy disks, optical discs,digital versatile disk (DVD), compact disk (CD), microdrive, andmagneto-optical disks, and magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems(including molecular memory ICs), or any type of media or devicesuitable for storing instructions and/or data. Additionally, the entireprogram code, or portions thereof, may be transmitted and downloadedfrom a software source over a transmission medium, e.g., over theInternet, or from another server, as is well known, or transmitted overany other conventional network connection as is well known (e.g.,extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using any communication medium and protocols(e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet, etc.) as are well known. It willalso be appreciated that computer code for the disclosed implementationscan be realized in any programming language that can be executed on aclient system and/or server or server system such as, for example, C,C++, HTML, any other markup language, Java™, JavaScript, ActiveX, anyother scripting language, such as VBScript, and many other programminglanguages as are well known may be used. (Java™ is a trademark of SunMicrosystems, Inc.).

According to some implementations, each system 16 is configured toprovide web pages, forms, applications, data and media content to user(client) systems 12 to support the access by user systems 12 as tenantsof system 16. As such, system 16 provides security mechanisms to keepeach tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than oneMTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another(e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or theymay be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one ormore servers located in city A and one or more servers located in cityB). As used herein, each MTS could include one or more logically and/orphysically connected servers distributed locally or across one or moregeographic locations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to referto a computing device or system, including processing hardware andprocess space(s), an associated storage system such as a memory deviceor database, and, in some instances, a database application (e.g.,OODBMS or RDBMS) as is well known in the art. It should also beunderstood that “server system” and “server” are often usedinterchangeably herein. Similarly, the database objects described hereincan be implemented as single databases, a distributed database, acollection of distributed databases, a database with redundant online oroffline backups or other redundancies, etc., and might include adistributed database or storage network and associated processingintelligence.

FIG. 1B shows a block diagram of an example of some implementations ofelements of FIG. 1A and various possible interconnections between theseelements. That is, FIG. 1B also illustrates environment 10. However, inFIG. 1B elements of system 16 and various interconnections in someimplementations are further illustrated. FIG. 1B shows that user system12 may include processor system 12A, memory system 12B, input system12C, and output system 12D. FIG. 1B shows network 14 and system 16. FIG.1B also shows that system 16 may include tenant data storage 22, tenantdata 23, system data storage 24, system data 25, User Interface (UI) 30,Application Program Interface (API) 32, PL/SOQL 34, save routines 36,application setup mechanism 38, applications servers 1001-100N, systemprocess space 102, tenant process spaces 104, tenant management processspace 110, tenant storage area 112, user storage 114, and applicationmetadata 116. In other implementations, environment 10 may not have thesame elements as those listed above and/or may have other elementsinstead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

User system 12, network 14, system 16, tenant data storage 22, andsystem data storage 24 were discussed above in FIG. 1A. Regarding usersystem 12, processor system 12A may be any combination of one or moreprocessors. Memory system 12B may be any combination of one or morememory devices, short term, and/or long term memory. Input system 12Cmay be any combination of input devices, such as one or more keyboards,mice, trackballs, scanners, cameras, and/or interfaces to networks.Output system 12D may be any combination of output devices, such as oneor more monitors, printers, and/or interfaces to networks. As shown byFIG. 1B, system 16 may include a network interface 20 (of FIG. 1A)implemented as a set of HTTP application servers 100, an applicationplatform 18, tenant data storage 22, and system data storage 24. Alsoshown is system process space 102, including individual tenant processspaces 104 and a tenant management process space 110. Each applicationserver 100 may be configured to communicate with tenant data storage 22and the tenant data 23 therein, and system data storage 24 and thesystem data 25 therein to serve requests of user systems 12. The tenantdata 23 might be divided into individual tenant storage areas 112, whichcan be either a physical arrangement and/or a logical arrangement ofdata. Within each tenant storage area 112, user storage 114 andapplication metadata 116 might be similarly allocated for each user. Forexample, a copy of a user's most recently used (MRU) items might bestored to user storage 114. Similarly, a copy of MRU items for an entireorganization that is a tenant might be stored to tenant storage area112. A UI 30 provides a user interface and an API 32 provides anapplication programmer interface to system 16 resident processes tousers and/or developers at user systems 12. The tenant data and thesystem data may be stored in various databases, such as one or moreOracle| databases.

Application platform 18 includes an application setup mechanism 38 thatsupports application developers' creation and management ofapplications, which may be saved as metadata into tenant data storage 22by save routines 36 for execution by subscribers as one or more tenantprocess spaces 104 managed by tenant management process 110 for example.Invocations to such applications may be coded using PL/SOQL 34 thatprovides a programming language style interface extension to API 32. Adetailed description of some PL/SOQL language implementations isdiscussed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478, titled METHODAND SYSTEM FOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA AMULTI-TENANT ON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, issued onJun. 1, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety andfor all purposes. Invocations to applications may be detected by one ormore system processes, which manage retrieving application metadata 116for the subscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata asan application in a virtual machine.

Each application server 100 may be communicably coupled to databasesystems, e.g., having access to system data 25 and tenant data 23, via adifferent network connection. For example, one application server 1001might be coupled via the network 14 (e.g., the Internet), anotherapplication server 100N-1 might be coupled via a direct network link,and another application server 100N might be coupled by yet a differentnetwork connection. Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) are typical protocols for communicating between applicationservers 100 and the database system. However, it will be apparent to oneskilled in the art that other transport protocols may be used tooptimize the system depending on the network interconnect used.

In certain implementations, each application server 100 is configured tohandle requests for any user associated with any organization that is atenant. Because it is desirable to be able to add and remove applicationservers from the server pool at any time for any reason, there ispreferably no server affinity for a user and/or organization to aspecific application server 100. In one implementation, therefore, aninterface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the applicationservers 100 and the user systems 12 to distribute requests to theapplication servers 100. In one implementation, the load balancer uses aleast connections algorithm to route user requests to the applicationservers 100. Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as roundrobin and observed response time, also can be used. For example, incertain implementations, three consecutive requests from the same usercould hit three different application servers 100, and three requestsfrom different users could hit the same application server 100. In thismanner, by way of example, system 16 is multi-tenant, wherein system 16handles storage of, and access to, different objects, data andapplications across disparate users and organizations.

As an example of storage, one tenant might be a company that employs asales force where each salesperson uses system 16 to manage their salesprocess. Thus, a user might maintain contact data, leads data, customerfollow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data, etc., allapplicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., in tenant datastorage 22). In an example of a MTS arrangement, since all of the dataand the applications to access, view, modify, report, transmit,calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a user system havingnothing more than network access, the user can manage his or her salesefforts and cycles from any of many different user systems. For example,if a salesperson is visiting a customer and the customer has Internetaccess in their lobby, the salesperson can obtain critical updates as tothat customer while waiting for the customer to arrive in the lobby.

While each user's data might be separate from other users' dataregardless of the employers of each user, some data might beorganization-wide data shared or accessible by a plurality of users orall of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, theremight be some data structures managed by system 16 that are allocated atthe tenant level while other data structures might be managed at theuser level. Because an MTS might support multiple tenants includingpossible competitors, the MTS should have security protocols that keepdata, applications, and application use separate. Also, because manytenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their ownsystem, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions thatmay be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data andtenant-specific data, system 16 might also maintain system level datausable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data mightinclude industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharableamong tenants.

In certain implementations, user systems 12 (which may be clientsystems) communicate with application servers 100 to request and updatesystem-level and tenant-level data from system 16 that may requiresending one or more queries to tenant data storage 22 and/or system datastorage 24. System 16 (e.g., an application server 100 in system 16)automatically generates one or more SQL statements (e.g., one or moreSQL queries) that are designed to access the desired information. Systemdata storage 24 may generate query plans to access the requested datafrom the database.

Each database can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, suchas a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefinedcategories. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may beused herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and customobjects according to some implementations. It should be understood that“table” and “object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each tablegenerally contains one or more data categories logically arranged ascolumns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or record of a tablecontains an instance of data for each category defined by the fields.For example, a CRM database may include a table that describes acustomer with fields for basic contact information such as name,address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table might describe apurchase order, including fields for information such as customer,product, sale price, date, etc. In some multi-tenant database systems,standard entity tables might be provided for use by all tenants. For CRMdatabase applications, such standard entities might include tables forcase, account, contact, lead, and opportunity data objects, eachcontaining pre-defined fields. It should be understood that the word“entity” may also be used interchangeably herein with “object” and“table”.

In some multi-tenant database systems, tenants may be allowed to createand store custom objects, or they may be allowed to customize standardentities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standardobjects, including custom index fields. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No.7,779,039, titled CUSTOM ENTITIES AND FIELDS IN A MULTI-TENANT DATABASESYSTEM, by Weissman et al., issued on Aug. 17, 2010, and herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes, teachessystems and methods for creating custom objects as well as customizingstandard objects in a multi-tenant database system. In certainimplementations, for example, all custom entity data rows are stored ina single multi-tenant physical table, which may contain multiple logicaltables per organization. It is transparent to customers that theirmultiple “tables” are in fact stored in one large table or that theirdata may be stored in the same table as the data of other customers.

FIG. 2A shows a system diagram illustrating an example of architecturalcomponents of an on-demand service environment 200 according to someimplementations. A client machine located in the cloud 204, generallyreferring to one or more networks in combination, as described herein,may communicate with the on-demand service environment via one or moreedge routers 208 and 212. A client machine can be any of the examples ofuser systems 12 described above. The edge routers may communicate withone or more core switches 220 and 224 via firewall 216. The coreswitches may communicate with a load balancer 228, which may distributeserver load over different pods, such as the pods 240 and 244. The pods240 and 244, which may each include one or more servers and/or othercomputing resources, may perform data processing and other operationsused to provide on-demand services. Communication with the pods may beconducted via pod switches 232 and 236. Components of the on-demandservice environment may communicate with a database storage 256 via adatabase firewall 248 and a database switch 252.

As shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, accessing an on-demand service environmentmay involve communications transmitted among a variety of differenthardware and/or software components. Further, the on-demand serviceenvironment 200 is a simplified representation of an actual on-demandservice environment. For example, while only one or two devices of eachtype are shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, some implementations of an on-demandservice environment may include anywhere from one to many devices ofeach type. Also, the on-demand service environment need not include eachdevice shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, or may include additional devices notshown in FIGS. 2A and 2B.

Moreover, one or more of the devices in the on-demand serviceenvironment 200 may be implemented on the same physical device or ondifferent hardware. Some devices may be implemented using hardware or acombination of hardware and software. Thus, terms such as “dataprocessing apparatus,” “machine,” “server” and “device” as used hereinare not limited to a single hardware device, but rather include anyhardware and software configured to provide the described functionality.

The cloud 204 is intended to refer to a data network or plurality ofdata networks, often including the Internet. Client machines located inthe cloud 204 may communicate with the on-demand service environment toaccess services provided by the on-demand service environment. Forexample, client machines may access the on-demand service environment toretrieve, store, edit, and/or process information.

In some implementations, the edge routers 208 and 212 route packetsbetween the cloud 204 and other components of the on-demand serviceenvironment 200. The edge routers 208 and 212 may employ the BorderGateway Protocol (BGP). The BGP is the core routing protocol of theInternet. The edge routers 208 and 212 may maintain a table of IPnetworks or ‘prefixes’, which designate network reachability amongautonomous systems on the Internet.

In one or more implementations, the firewall 216 may protect the innercomponents of the on-demand service environment 200 from Internettraffic. The firewall 216 may block, permit, or deny access to the innercomponents of the on-demand service environment 200 based upon a set ofrules and other criteria. The firewall 216 may act as one or more of apacket filter, an application gateway, a stateful filter, a proxyserver, or any other type of firewall.

In some implementations, the core switches 220 and 224 are high-capacityswitches that transfer packets within the on-demand service environment200. The core switches 220 and 224 may be configured as network bridgesthat quickly route data between different components within theon-demand service environment. In some implementations, the use of twoor more core switches 220 and 224 may provide redundancy and/or reducedlatency.

In some implementations, the pods 240 and 244 may perform the core dataprocessing and service functions provided by the on-demand serviceenvironment. Each pod may include various types of hardware and/orsoftware computing resources. An example of the pod architecture isdiscussed in greater detail with reference to FIG. 2B.

In some implementations, communication between the pods 240 and 244 maybe conducted via the pod switches 232 and 236. The pod switches 232 and236 may facilitate communication between the pods 240 and 244 and clientmachines located in the cloud 204, for example via core switches 220 and224. Also, the pod switches 232 and 236 may facilitate communicationbetween the pods 240 and 244 and the database storage 256.

In some implementations, the load balancer 228 may distribute workloadbetween the pods 240 and 244. Balancing the on-demand service requestsbetween the pods may assist in improving the use of resources,increasing throughput, reducing response times, and/or reducingoverhead. The load balancer 228 may include multilayer switches toanalyze and forward traffic.

In some implementations, access to the database storage 256 may beguarded by a database firewall 248. The database firewall 248 may act asa computer application firewall operating at the database applicationlayer of a protocol stack. The database firewall 248 may protect thedatabase storage 256 from application attacks such as structure querylanguage (SQL) injection, database rootkits, and unauthorizedinformation disclosure.

In some implementations, the database firewall 248 may include a hostusing one or more forms of reverse proxy services to proxy trafficbefore passing it to a gateway router. The database firewall 248 mayinspect the contents of database traffic and block certain content ordatabase requests. The database firewall 248 may work on the SQLapplication level atop the TCP/IP stack, managing applications'connection to the database or SQL management interfaces as well asintercepting and enforcing packets traveling to or from a databasenetwork or application interface.

In some implementations, communication with the database storage 256 maybe conducted via the database switch 252. The multi-tenant databasestorage 256 may include more than one hardware and/or softwarecomponents for handling database queries. Accordingly, the databaseswitch 252 may direct database queries transmitted by other componentsof the on-demand service environment (e.g., the pods 240 and 244) to thecorrect components within the database storage 256.

In some implementations, the database storage 256 is an on-demanddatabase system shared by many different organizations. The on-demanddatabase system may employ a multi-tenant approach, a virtualizedapproach, or any other type of database approach. An on-demand databasesystem is discussed in greater detail with reference to FIGS. 1A and 1B.

FIG. 2B shows a system diagram further illustrating an example ofarchitectural components of an on-demand service environment accordingto some implementations. The pod 244 may be used to render services to auser of the on-demand service environment 200. In some implementations,each pod may include a variety of servers and/or other systems. The pod244 includes one or more content batch servers 264, content searchservers 268, query servers 282, file force servers 286, access controlsystem (ACS) servers 280, batch servers 284, and app servers 288. Also,the pod 244 includes database instances 290, quick file systems (QFS)292, and indexers 294. In one or more implementations, some or allcommunication between the servers in the pod 244 may be transmitted viathe switch 236.

In some implementations, the app servers 288 may include a hardwareand/or software framework dedicated to the execution of procedures(e.g., programs, routines, scripts) for supporting the construction ofapplications provided by the on-demand service environment 200 via thepod 244. In some implementations, the hardware and/or software frameworkof an app server 288 is configured to execute operations of the servicesdescribed herein, including performance of the blocks ofmethods/processes described with reference to FIGS. 15-21. Inalternative implementations, two or more app servers 288 may be includedand cooperate to perform such methods, or one or more other servers inFIG. 2B can be configured to perform the disclosed methods.

The content batch servers 264 may requests internal to the pod. Theserequests may be long-running and/or not tied to a particular customer.For example, the content batch servers 264 may handle requests relatedto log mining, cleanup work, and maintenance tasks.

The content search servers 268 may provide query and indexer functions.For example, the functions provided by the content search servers 268may allow users to search through content stored in the on-demandservice environment.

The file force servers 286 may manage requests information stored in theFileforce storage 278. The Fileforce storage 278 may store informationsuch as documents, images, and basic large objects (BLOBs). By managingrequests for information using the file force servers 286, the imagefootprint on the database may be reduced.

The query servers 282 may be used to retrieve information from one ormore file systems. For example, the query system 282 may receiverequests for information from the app servers 288 and then transmitinformation queries to the NFS 296 located outside the pod.

The pod 244 may share a database instance 290 configured as amulti-tenant environment in which different organizations share accessto the same database.

Additionally, services rendered by the pod 244 may require varioushardware and/or software resources. In some implementations, the ACSservers 280 may control access to data, hardware resources, or softwareresources.

In some implementations, the batch servers 284 may process batch jobs,which are used to run tasks at specified times. Thus, the batch servers284 may transmit instructions to other servers, such as the app servers288, to trigger the batch jobs.

In some implementations, the QFS 292 may be an open source file systemavailable from Sun Microsystems® of Santa Clara, Calif. The QFS mayserve as a rapid-access file system for storing and accessinginformation available within the pod 244. The QFS 292 may support somevolume management capabilities, allowing many disks to be groupedtogether into a file system. File system metadata can be kept on aseparate set of disks, which may be useful for streaming applicationswhere long disk seeks cannot be tolerated. Thus, the QFS system maycommunicate with one or more content search servers 268 and/or indexers294 to identify, retrieve, move, and/or update data stored in thenetwork file systems 296 and/or other storage systems.

In some implementations, one or more query servers 282 may communicatewith the NFS 296 to retrieve and/or update information stored outside ofthe pod 244. The NFS 296 may allow servers located in the pod 244 toaccess information to access files over a network in a manner similar tohow local storage is accessed.

In some implementations, queries from the query servers 222 may betransmitted to the NFS 296 via the load balancer 228, which maydistribute resource requests over various resources available in theon-demand service environment. The NFS 296 may also communicate with theQFS 292 to update the information stored on the NFS 296 and/or toprovide information to the QFS 292 for use by servers located within thepod 244.

In some implementations, the pod may include one or more databaseinstances 290. The database instance 290 may transmit information to theQFS 292. When information is transmitted to the QFS, it may be availablefor use by servers within the pod 244 without requiring an additionaldatabase call.

In some implementations, database information may be transmitted to theindexer 294. Indexer 294 may provide an index of information availablein the database 290 and/or QFS 292. The index information may beprovided to file force servers 286 and/or the QFS 292.

III. Tracking Updates to a Record Stored in a Database

As multiple users might be able to change the data of a record, it canbe useful for certain users to be notified when a record is updated.Also, even if a user does not have authority to change a record, theuser still might want to know when there is an update to the record. Forexample, a vendor may negotiate a new price with a salesperson ofcompany X, where the salesperson is a user associated with tenant Y. Aspart of creating a new invoice or for accounting purposes, thesalesperson can change the price saved in the database. It may beimportant for co-workers to know that the price has changed. Thesalesperson could send an e-mail to certain people, but this is onerousand the salesperson might not e-mail all of the people who need to knowor want to know. Accordingly, some implementations of the disclosedtechniques can inform others (e.g., co-workers) who want to know aboutan update to a record automatically.

FIG. 3 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 300 for trackingupdates to a record stored in a database system, performed in accordancewith some implementations. Method 300 (and other methods describedherein) may be implemented at least partially with multi-tenant databasesystem 16, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive orretrieve information, process the information, store results, andtransmit the results. In other implementations, method 300 may beimplemented at least partially with a single tenant database system. Invarious implementations, blocks may be omitted, combined, or split intoadditional blocks for method 300, as well as for other methods describedherein.

In block 310, the database system receives a request to update a firstrecord. In one implementation, the request is received from a firstuser. For example, a user may be accessing a page associated with thefirst record, and may change a displayed field and hit save. In anotherimplementation, the database system can automatically create therequest. For instance, the database system can create the request inresponse to another event, e.g., a request to change a field could besent periodically at a particular date and/or time of day, or a changeto another field or object. The database system can obtain a new valuebased on other fields of a record and/or based on parameters in thesystem.

The request for the update of a field of a record is an example of anevent associated with the first record for which a feed tracked updatemay be created. In other implementations, the database system canidentify other events besides updates to fields of a record. Forexample, an event can be a submission of approval to change a field.Such an event can also have an associated field (e.g., a field showing astatus of whether a change has been submitted). Other examples of eventscan include creation of a record, deletion of a record, converting arecord from one type to another (e.g., converting a lead to anopportunity), closing a record (e.g., a case type record), andpotentially any other state change of a record - any of which couldinclude a field change associated with the state change. Any of theseevents update the record whether by changing a field of the record, astate of the record, or some other characteristic or property of therecord. In one implementation, a list of supported events for creating afeed tracked update can be maintained within the database system, e.g.,at a server or in a database.

In block 320, the database system writes new data to the first record.In one implementation, the new data may include a new value thatreplaces old data. For example, a field is updated with a new value. Inanother implementation, the new data can be a value for a field that didnot contain data before. In yet another implementation, the new datacould be a flag, e.g., for a status of the record, which can be storedas a field of the record.

In some implementations, a “field” can also include records, which arechild objects of the first record in a parent-child hierarchy. A fieldcan alternatively include a pointer to a child record. A child objectitself can include further fields. Thus, if a field of a child object isupdated with a new value, the parent record also can be considered tohave a field changed. In one example, a field could be a list of relatedchild objects, also called a related list.

In block 330, a feed tracked update is generated about the update to therecord. In one implementation, the feed tracked update is created inparts for assembling later into a display version. For example, evententries can be created and tracked in one table, and changed fieldentries can be tracked in another table that is cross-referenced withthe first table. More specifics of such implementations are providedlater, e.g., with respect to FIG. 9A. In another implementation, thefeed tracked update is automatically generated by the database system.The feed tracked update can convey in words that the first record hasbeen updated and provide details about what was updated in the recordand who performed the update. In some implementations, a feed trackedupdate is generated for only certain types of event and/or updatesassociated with the first record.

In one implementation, a tenant (e.g., through an administrator) canconfigure the database system to create (enable) feed tracked updatesonly for certain types of records. For example, an administrator canspecify that records of designated types such as accounts andopportunities are enabled. When an update (or other event) is receivedfor the enabled record type, then a feed tracked update would begenerated. In another implementation, a tenant can also specify thefields of a record whose changes are to be tracked, and for which feedtracked updates are created. In one aspect, a maximum number of fieldscan be specified for tracking, and may include custom fields. In oneimplementation, the type of change can also be specified, for example,that the value change of a field is required to be larger than athreshold (e.g., an absolute amount or a percentage change). In yetanother implementation, a tenant can specify which events are to cause ageneration of a feed tracked update. Also, in one implementation,individual users can specify configurations specific to them, which cancreate custom feeds as described in more detail below.

In one implementation, changes to fields of a child object are nottracked to create feed tracked updates for the parent record. In anotherimplementation, the changes to fields of a child object can be trackedto create feed tracked updates for the parent record. For example, achild object of the parent type can be specified for tracking, andcertain fields of the child object can be specified for tracking. Asanother example, if the child object is of a type specified fortracking, then a tracked change for the child object is propagated toparent records of the child object.

In block 340, the feed tracked update is added to a feed for the firstrecord. In one implementation, adding the feed tracked update to a feedcan include adding events to a table (which may be specific to a recordor be for all or a group of objects), where a display version of a feedtracked update can be generated dynamically and presented as aninformation update when a user requests a feed for the first record. Inanother implementation, a display version of a feed tracked update canbe added when a record feed is stored and maintained for a record. Asmentioned above, a feed may be maintained for only certain records. Inone implementation, the feed of a record can be stored in the databaseassociated with the record. For example, the feed can be stored as afield (e.g., as a child object) of the record. Such a field can store apointer to the text to be displayed for the feed tracked update.

In some implementations, only the current feed tracked update (or othercurrent feed item) may be kept or temporarily stored, e.g., in sometemporary memory structure. For example, a feed tracked update for onlya most recent change to any particular field is kept. In otherimplementations, many previous feed tracked updates may be kept in thefeed. A time and/or date for each feed tracked update can be tracked.Herein, a feed of a record is also referred to as an entity feed, as arecord is an instance of a particular entity object of the database.

In block 350, followers of the first record can be identified. Afollower is a user following the first record, such as a subscriber tothe feed of the first record. In one implementation, when a userrequests a feed of a particular record, such an identification of block350 can be omitted. In another implementation where a record feed ispushed to a user (e.g., as part of a news feed), then the user can beidentified as a follower of the first record. Accordingly, this blockcan include the identification of records and other objects beingfollowed by a particular user.

In one implementation, the database system can store a list of thefollowers for a particular record. In various implementations, the listcan be stored with the first record or associated with the record usingan identifier (e.g., a pointer) to retrieve the list. For example, thelist can be stored in a field of the first record. In anotherimplementation, a list of the records that a user is following is used.In one implementation, the database system can have a routine that runsfor each user, where the routine polls the records in the list todetermine if a new feed tracked update has been added to a feed of therecord. In another implementation, the routine for the user can berunning at least partially on a user device, which contacts the databaseto perform the polling.

In block 360, in one implementation, the feed tracked update can bestored in a table, as described in greater detail below. When the useropens a feed, an appropriate query is sent to one or more tables toretrieve updates to records, also described in greater detail below. Insome implementations, the feed shows feed tracked updates in reversechronological order. In one implementation, the feed tracked update ispushed to the feed of a user, e.g., by a routine that determines thefollowers for the record from a list associated with the record. Inanother implementation, the feed tracked update is pulled to a feed,e.g., by a user device. This pulling may occur when a user requests thefeed, as occurs in block 370. Thus, these actions may occur in adifferent order. The creation of the feed for a pull may be a dynamiccreation that identifies records being followed by the requesting user,generates the display version of relevant feed tracked updates fromstored information (e.g., event and field change), and adds the feedtracked updates into the feed. A feed of feed tracked updates of recordsand other objects that a user is following is also generally referred toherein as a news feed, which can be a subset of a larger informationfeed in which other types of information updates appear, such as posts.

In yet another implementation, the feed tracked update could be sent asan e-mail to the follower, instead of in a feed. In one implementation,e-mail alerts for events can enable people to be e-mailed when certainevents occur. In another implementation, e-mails can be sent when thereare posts on a user profile and posts on entities to which the usersubscribes. In one implementation, a user can turn on/off email alertsfor all or some events. In an implementation, a user can specify whatkind of feed tracked updates to receive about a record that the user isfollowing. For example, a user can choose to only receive feed trackedupdates about certain fields of a record that the user is following, andpotentially about what kind of update was performed (e.g., a new valueinput into a specified field, or the creation of a new field).

In block 370, a follower can access his/her news feed to see the feedtracked update. In one implementation, the user has just one news feedfor all of the records that the user is following. In one aspect, a usercan access his/her own feed by selecting a particular tab or otherobject on a page of an interface to the database system. Once selectedthe feed can be provided as a list, e.g., with an identifier (e.g., atime) or including some or all of the text of the feed tracked update.In another implementation, the user can specify how the feed trackedupdates are to be displayed and/or sent to the user. For example, a usercan specify a font for the text, a location of where the feed can beselected and displayed, amount of text to be displayed, and other textor symbols to be displayed (e.g., importance flags).

FIG. 4 shows a block diagram of an example of components of a databasesystem configuration 400 performing a method for tracking an update to arecord according to some implementations. Database system configuration400 can perform implementations of method 300, as well asimplementations of other methods described herein.

A first user 405 sends a request 1 to update record 425 in databasesystem 416. Although an update request is described, other events thatare being tracked are equally applicable. In various implementations,the request 1 can be sent via a user interface (e.g., 30 of FIG. 1B) oran application program interface (e.g., API 32). An I/O port 420 canaccommodate the signals of request 1 via any input interface, and sendthe signals to one or more processors 417. The processor 417 can analyzethe request and determine actions to be performed. Herein, any referenceto a processor 417 can refer to a specific processor or any set ofprocessors in database system 416, which can be collectively referred toas processor 417.

Processor 417 can determine an identifier for record 425, and sendcommands with the new data 2 of the request to record database 412 toupdate record 425. In one implementation, record database 412 is wheretenant data 112 of FIG. 1B is stored. The request 1 and new datacommands 2 can be encapsulated in a single write transaction sent torecord database 412. In one implementation, multiple changes to recordsin the database can be made in a single write transaction.

Processor 417 can also analyze request 1 to determine whether a feedtracked update is to be created, which at this point may includedetermining whether the event (e.g., a change to a particular field) isto be tracked. This determination can be based on an interaction (i.e.,an exchange of data) with record database 412 and/or other databases, orbased on information stored locally (e.g., in cache or RAM) at processor417. In one implementation, a list of record types that are beingtracked can be stored. The list may be different for each tenant, e.g.,as each tenant may configure the database system to its ownspecifications. Thus, if the record 425 is of a type not being tracked,then the determination of whether to create a feed tracked update canstop there.

The same list or a second list (which can be stored in a same locationor a different location) can also include the fields and/or events thatare tracked for the record types in the first list. This list can besearched to determine if the event is being tracked. A list may alsocontain information having the granularity of listing specific recordsthat are to be tracked (e.g., if a tenant can specify the particularrecords to be tracked, as opposed to just type).

As an example, processor 417 may obtain an identifier associated withrecord 425 (e.g., obtained from request 1 or database 412), potentiallyalong with a tenant identifier, and cross-reference the identifier witha list of records for which feed tracked updates are to be created.Specifically, the record identifier can be used to determine the recordtype and a list of tracked types can be searched for a match. Thespecific record may also be checked if such individual record trackingwas enabled. The name of the field to be changed can also be used tosearch a list of tracking-enabled fields. Other criteria besides fieldand events can be used to determine whether a feed tracked update iscreated, e.g., type of change in the field. If a feed tracked update isto be generated, processor 417 can then generate the feed trackedupdate.

In some implementations, a feed tracked update is created dynamicallywhen a feed (e.g., the entity feed of record 425) is requested. Thus, inone implementation, a feed tracked update can be created when a userrequests the entity feed for record 425. In this implementation, thefeed tracked update may be created (e.g., assembled), includingre-created, each time the entity feed is to be displayed to any user. Inone implementation, one or more hifeed tracked update tables can keeptrack of previous events so that the feed tracked update can bere-created.

In another implementation, a feed tracked update can be created at thetime the event occurs, and the feed tracked update can be added to alist of feed items. The list of feed items may be specific to record425, or may be an aggregate of feed items including feed items for manyrecords. Such an aggregate list can include a record identifier so thatthe feed items for the entity feed of record 425 can be easilyretrieved. For example, after the feed tracked update has beengenerated, processor 417 can add the new feed tracked update 3 to a feedof record 425. As mentioned above, in one implementation, the feed canbe stored in a field (e.g., as a child object) of record 425. In anotherimplementation, the feed can be stored in another location or in anotherdatabase, but with a link (e.g., a connecting identifier) to record 425.The feed can be organized in various ways, e.g., as a linked list, anarray, or other data structure.

A second user 430 can access the new feed tracked update 3 in variousways. In one implementation, second user 430 can send a request 4 forthe record feed. For example, second user 430 can access a home page(detail page) of the record 425 (e.g., with a query or by browsing), andthe feed can be obtained through a tab, button, or other activationobject on the page. The feed can be displayed on the screen ordownloaded.

In another implementation, processor 417 can add the new feed trackedupdate 5 to a feed (e.g., a news feed) of a user that is followingrecord 425. In one implementation, processor 417 can determine each ofthe followers of record 425 by accessing a list of the users that havebeen registered as followers. This determination can be done for eachnew event (e.g., update 1). In another implementation, processor 417 canpoll (e.g., with a query) the records that second user 430 is followingto determine when new feed tracked updates (or other feed items) areavailable. Processor 417 can use a follower profile 435 of second user430 that can contain a list of the records that the second user 430 isfollowing. Such a list can be contained in other parts of the databaseas well. Second user 430 can then send a request 6 to his/her profile435 to obtain a feed, which contains the new feed tracked update. Theuser's profile 435 can be stored in a profile database 414, which can bethe same or different than database 412.

In some implementations, a user can define a news feed to include newfeed tracked updates from various records, which may be limited to amaximum number. In one implementation, each user has one news feed. Inanother implementation, the follower profile 435 can include thespecifications of each of the records to be followed (with the criteriafor what feed tracked updates are to be provided and how they aredisplayed), as well as the feed.

Some implementations can provide various types of record (entity) feeds.Entity Feeds can exist for record types like account, opportunity, case,and contact. An entity feed can tell a user about the actions thatpeople have taken on that particular record or on one its relatedrecords. The entity feed can include who made the action, which fieldwas changed, and the old and new values. In one implementation, entityfeeds can exist on all supported records as a list that is linked to thespecific record. For example, a feed could be stored in a field thatallows lists (e.g., linked lists) or as a child object.

IV. Tracking Actions of a User

In addition to knowing about events associated with a particular record,it can be helpful for a user to know what a particular user is doing. Inparticular, it might be nice to know what the user is doing without theuser having to generate the feed tracked update (e.g., a user submittinga synopsis of what the user has done). Accordingly, implementations canautomatically track actions of a user that trigger events, and feedtracked updates can be generated for certain events.

FIG. 5 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 500 for trackingactions of a user of a database system, performed in accordance withsome implementations. Method 500 may be performed in addition to method300. The operations of method 300, including order of blocks, can beperformed in conjunction with method 500 and other methods describedherein. Thus, a feed can be composed of changes to a record and actionsof users.

In block 510, a database system (e.g., 16 of FIGS. 1A and 1B) identifiesan action of a first user. In one implementation, the action triggers anevent, and the event is identified. For example, the action of a userrequesting an update to a record can be identified, where the event isreceiving a request or is the resulting update of a record. The actionmay thus be defined by the resulting event. In another implementation,only certain types of actions (events) are identified. Which actions areidentified can be set as a default or can be configurable by a tenant,or even configurable at a user level. In this way, processing effort canbe reduced since only some actions are identified.

In block 520, it is determined whether the event qualifies for a feedtracked update. In one implementation, a predefined list of events(e.g., as mentioned herein) can be created so that only certain actionsare identified. In one implementation, an administrator (or other user)of a tenant can specify the type of actions (events) for which a feedtracked update is to be generated. This block may also be performed formethod 300.

In block 530, a feed tracked update is generated about the action. In anexample where the action is an update of a record, the feed trackedupdate can be similar or the same as the feed tracked update created forthe record. The description can be altered though to focus on the useras opposed to the record. For example, “John D. has closed a newopportunity for account XYZ” as opposed to “an opportunity has beenclosed for account XYZ.”

In block 540, the feed tracked update is added to a profile feed of thefirst user when, e.g., the user clicks on a tab to open a page in abrowser program displaying the feed. In one implementation, a feed for aparticular user can be accessed on a page of the user's profile, in asimilar manner as a record feed can be accessed on a detail page of therecord. In another implementation, the first user may not have a profilefeed and the feed tracked update may just be stored temporarily beforeproceeding. A profile feed of a user can be stored associated with theuser's profile. This profile feed can be added to a news feed of anotheruser.

In block 550, followers of the first user are identified. In oneimplementation, a user can specify which type of actions other users canfollow. Similarly, in one implementation, a follower can select whatactions by a user the follower wants to follow. In an implementationwhere different followers follow different types of actions, which usersare followers of that user and the particular action can be identified,e.g., using various lists that track what actions and criteria are beingfollowed by a particular user. In various implementations, the followersof the first user can be identified in a similar manner as followers ofa record, as described above for block 350.

In block 560, the feed tracked update is added to a news feed of eachfollower of the first user when, e.g., the follower clicks on a tab toopen a page displaying the news feed. The feed tracked update can beadded in a similar manner as the feed items for a record feed. The newsfeed can contain feed tracked updates both about users and records. Inanother implementation, a user can specify what kind of feed trackedupdates to receive about a user that the user is following. For example,a user could specify feed tracked updates with particular keywords, ofcertain types of records, of records owned or created by certain users,particular fields, and other criteria as mentioned herein.

In block 570, a follower accesses the news feed and sees the feedtracked update. In one implementation, the user has just one news feedfor all of the records that the user is following. In anotherimplementation, a user can access his/her own feed (i.e. feed abouthis/her own actions) by selecting a particular tab or other object on apage of an interface to the database system. Thus, a feed can includefeed tracked updates about what other users are doing in the databasesystem. When a user becomes aware of a relevant action of another user,the user can contact the co-worker, thereby fostering teamwork.

V. Generation of a Feed Tracked Update

As described above, some implementations can generate text describingevents (e.g., updates) that have occurred for a record and actions by auser that trigger an event. A database system can be configured togenerate the feed tracked updates for various events in various ways.

A. Which Events to Generate a Feed Tracked Update

In a database system, there are various events that can be detected.However, the operator of the database system and/or a tenant may notwant to detect every possible event as this could be costly with regardsto performance. Accordingly, the operator and/or the tenant canconfigure the database system to only detect certain events. Forexample, an update of a record may be an event that is to be detected.

Out of the events that are detected, a tenant (including a specific userof the tenant) may not want a feed tracked update about each detectedevent. For example, all updates to a record may be identified at a firstlevel. Then, based on specifications of an administrator and/or aspecific user of a tenant, another level of inquiry can be made as towhether a feed tracked update is to be generated about the detectedevent. For example, the events that qualify for a feed tracked updatecan be restricted to changes for only certain fields of the record, andcan differ depending on which user is receiving the feed. In oneimplementation, a database system can track whether an event qualifiesfor a feed tracked update for any user, and once the feed tracked updateis generated, it can be determined who is to receive the feed trackedupdate.

Supported events (events for which a feed tracked update is generated)can include actions for standard fields, custom fields, and standardrelated lists. Regarding standard fields, for the entity feed and theprofile feed, a standard field update can trigger a feed tracked updateto be presented in that feed. In one implementation, which standardfield can create a feed tracked update can be set by an administrator tobe the same for every user. In another implementation, a user can setwhich standard fields create a feed tracked update for that user's newsfeed. Custom fields can be treated the same or differently than standardfields.

The generation of a feed item can also depend on a relationship of anobject to other objects (e.g., parent-child relationships). For example,if a child object is updated, a feed tracked update may be written to afeed of a parent of the child object. The level of relationship can beconfigured, e.g., only 1 level of separation (i.e. nograndparent-grandchild relationship). Also, in one implementation, afeed tracked update is generated only for objects above the objectsbeing updated, i.e., a feed tracked update is not written for a childwhen the parent is updated.

In some implementations, for related lists of a record, a feed trackedupdate is written to its parent record (1 level only) when the relatedlist item is added, and not when the list item is changed or deleted.For example: user A added a new opportunity XYZ for account ABC. In thismanner, entity feeds can be controlled so as not to be cluttered withfeed tracked updates about changes to their related items.

Any changes to the related list item can be tracked on their own entityfeed, if that related list item has a feed on it. In thisimplementation, if a user wants to see a feed of the related list itemthen the user can subscribe to it. Such a subscription might be when auser cares about a specific opportunity related to a specific account. Auser can also browse to that object's entity feed. Other implementationscan create a feed tracked update when a related entity is changed ordeleted.

In one implementation, an administrator (of the system or of a specifictenant) can define which events of which related objects are to havefeed tracked updates written about them in a parent record. In anotherimplementation, a user can define which related object events to show.In one implementation, there are two types of related lists of relatedobjects: first class lookup and second class lookup. Each of the recordsin the related lists can have a different rule for whether a feedtracked update is generated for a parent record. Each of these relatedlists can be composed as custom related lists. In variousimplementations, a custom related list can be composed of customobjects; the lists can contain a variety of records or items (e.g., notrestricted to a particular type of record or item), and can be displayedin a customized manner.

In one implementation, a first class lookup contains records of a childrecord that can exist by itself. For example, the contacts on an accountexist as a separate record and also as a child record of the account. Inanother implementation, a record in a first class lookup can have itsown feed, which can be displayed on its detail page.

In one implementation, a second class lookup can have line itemsexisting only in the context of their parent record (e.g., activities onan opportunity, contact roles on opportunity/contact). In oneimplementation, the line items are not objects themselves, and thusthere is no detail page, and no place to put a feed. In anotherimplementation, a change in a second class lookup can be reported on thefeed of the parent.

Some implementations can also create feed tracked updates for dependentfield changes. A dependent field change is a field that changes valuewhen another field changes, and thus the field has a value that isdependent on the value of the other field. For example, a dependentfield might be a sum (or other formula) that totals values in otherfields, and thus the dependent field would change when one of the fieldsbeing summed changes. Accordingly, in one implementation, a change inone field could create feed tracked updates for multiple fields. Inother implementations, feed tracked updates are not created fordependent fields.

B. How the Feed Tracked Update is Generated

After it is determined that a feed tracked update is going to begenerated, some implementations can also determine how the feed trackedupdate is generated. In one implementation, different methods can beused for different events, e.g., in a similar fashion as for theconfigurability of which events feed tracked updates are generated. Afeed tracked update can also include a description of multiple events(e.g., john changed the account status and amount).

In one implementation, the feed tracked update is a grammaticalsentence, thereby being easily understandable by a person. In anotherimplementation, the feed tracked update provides detailed informationabout the update. In various examples, an old value and new value for afield may be included in the feed tracked update, an action for theupdate may be provided (e.g., submitted for approval), and the names ofparticular users that are responsible for replying or acting on the feedtracked update may be also provided. The feed tracked update can alsohave a level of importance based on settings chosen by theadministrator, a particular user requesting an update, or by a followinguser who is to receive the feed tracked update, which fields is updated,a percentage of the change in a field, the type of event, or anycombination of these factors.

The system may have a set of heuristics for creating a feed trackedupdate from the event (e.g., a request to update). For example, thesubject may be the user, the record, or a field being added or changed.The verb can be based on the action requested by the user, which can beselected from a list of verbs (which may be provided as defaults orinput by an administrator of a tenant). In one implementation, feedtracked updates can be generic containers with formatting restrictions,

As an example of a feed tracked update for a creation of a new record,“Mark Abramowitz created a new Opportunity for IBM-20,000 laptops withAmount as $3.5M and Sam Palmisano as Decision Maker.” This event can beposted to the profile feed for Mark Abramowitz and the entity feed forrecord of Opportunity for IBM-20,000 laptops. The pattern can be givenby (AgentFullName) created a new (ObjectName)(RecordName) with[(FieldName) as (FieldValue) [,/and] ]*[[added/changed/removed](RelatedListRecordName) [as/to/as] (RelatedListRecordValue) [,/and] ]*.Similar patterns can be formed for a changed field (standard or custom)and an added child record to a related list.

VI. Tracking Commentary From or About a User

Some implementations can also have a user submit text, instead of thedatabase system generating a feed tracked update. As the text issubmitted as part or all of a message by a user, the text can be aboutany topic. Thus, more information than just actions of a user and eventsof a record can be conveyed. In one implementation, the messages can beused to ask a question about a particular record, and users followingthe record can provide comments and responses.

FIG. 6 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 600 for creating anews feed from messages created by a user about a record or anotheruser, performed in accordance with some implementations. In oneimplementation, method 600 can be combined with methods 300 and 500. Inone aspect, a message can be associated with the first user when thefirst user creates the message (e.g., a post or comment about a recordor another user). In another aspect, a message can be associated withthe first user when the message is about the first user (e.g., posted byanother user on the first user's profile feed).

In block 610, the database system receives a message (e.g., a post orstatus update) associated with a first user. The message (e.g., a postor status update) can contain text and/or multimedia content submittedby another user or by the first user. In one implementation, a post isfor a section of the first user's profile page where any user can add apost, and where multiple posts can exist. Thus, a post can appear on thefirst user's profile page and can be viewed when the first user'sprofile is visited. For a message about a record, the post can appear ona detail page of a record. Note the message can appear in other feeds aswell. In another implementation, a status update about the first usercan only be added by the first user. In one implementation, a user canonly have one status message.

In block 620, the message is added to a table, as described in greaterdetail below. When the feed is opened, a query filters one or moretables to identify the first user, identify other persons that the useris following, and retrieve the message. Messages and record updates arepresented in a combined list as the feed. In this way, in oneimplementation, the message can be added to a profile feed of the firstuser, which is associated (e.g., as a related list) with the firstuser's profile. In one implementation, the posts are listedindefinitely. In another implementation, only the most recent posts(e.g., last 50) are kept in the profile feed. Such implementations canalso be employed with feed tracked updates. In yet anotherimplementation, the message can be added to a profile of the user addingthe message.

In block 630, the database system identifies followers of the firstuser. In one implementation, the database system can identify thefollowers as described above for method 500. In various implementations,a follower can select to follow a feed about the actions of the firstuser, messages about the first user, or both (potentially in a samefeed).

In block 640, the message is added to a news feed of each follower. Inone implementation, the message is only added to a news feed of aparticular follower if the message matches some criteria, e.g., themessage includes a particular keyword or other criteria. In anotherimplementation, a message can be deleted by the user who created themessage. In one implementation, once deleted by the author, the messageis deleted from all feeds to which the message had been added.

In block 650, the follower accesses a news feed and sees the message.For example, the follower can access a news feed on the follower's ownprofile page. As another example, the follower can have a news feed sentto his/her own desktop without having to first go to a home page.

In block 660, the database system receives a comment about the message.The database system can add the comment to a feed of the same firstuser, much as the original message was added. In one implementation, thecomment can also be added to a feed of a second user who added thecomment. In one implementation, users can also reply to the comment. Inanother implementation, users can add comments to a feed tracked update,and further comments can be associated with the feed tracked update. Inyet another implementation, making a comment or message is not an actionto which a feed tracked update is created. Thus, the message may be theonly feed item created from such an action.

In one implementation, if a feed tracked update or post is deleted, itscorresponding comments are deleted as well. In another implementation,new comments on a feed tracked update or post do not update the feedtracked update timestamp. Also, the feed tracked update or post cancontinue to be shown in a feed (profile feed, record feed, or news feed)if it has had a comment within a specified timeframe (e.g., within thelast week). Otherwise, the feed tracked update or post can be removed inan implementation.

In some implementations, all or most feed tracked updates can becommented on. In other implementations, feed tracked updates for certainrecords (e.g., cases or ideas) are not commentable. In variousimplementations, comments can be made for any one or more records ofopportunities, accounts, contacts, leads, and custom objects.

In block 670, the comment is added to a news feed of each follower. Inone implementation, a user can make the comment within the user's newsfeed. Such a comment can propagate to the appropriate profile feed orrecord feed, and then to the news feeds of the following users. Thus,feeds can include what people are saying, as well as what they aredoing. In one aspect, feeds are a way to stay up-to-date (e.g., onusers, opportunities, etc.) as well as an opportunity to reach out toco-workers/partners and engage them around common goals.

In some implementations, users can rate feed tracked updates or messages(including comments). A user can choose to prioritize a display of afeed so that higher rated feed items show up higher on a display. Forexample, in an implementation where comments are answers to a specificquestion, users can rate the different status posts so that a bestanswer can be identified. As another example, users are able to quicklyidentify feed items that are most important as those feed items can bedisplayed at a top of a list. The order of the feed items can be basedon an importance level (which can be determined by the database systemusing various factors, some of which are mentioned herein) and based ona rating from users. In one implementation, the rating is on a scalethat includes at least 3 values. In another implementation, the ratingis based on a binary scale.

Besides a profile for a user, a group can also be created. In variousimplementations, the group can be created based on certain criteria thatare common to the users, can be created by inviting users, or can becreated by receiving requests to join from a user. In oneimplementation, a group feed can be created, with messages being addedto the group feed when someone adds a message to the group as a whole.For example, a group page may have a section for posts. In anotherimplementation, a message can be added to a group feed when a message isadded about any one of the members. In yet another implementation, agroup feed can include feed tracked updates about actions of the groupas a whole (e.g., when an administrator changes data in a group profileor a record owned by the group), or about actions of an individualmember.

FIG. 7 shows an example of a group feed on a group page according tosome implementations. As shown, a feed item 710 shows that a user hasposted a document to the group object. The text “Bill Bauer has postedthe document Competitive Insights” can be generated by the databasesystem in a similar manner as feed tracked updates about a record beingchanged. A feed item 720 shows a post to the group, along with comments730 from Ella Johnson, James Saxon, Mary Moore and Bill Bauer.

FIG. 8 shows an example of a record feed containing a feed trackedupdate, post, and comments according to some implementations. Feed item810 shows a feed tracked update based on the event of submitting adiscount for approval. Other feed items show posts, e.g., from BillBauer, that are made to the record and comments, e.g., from Erica Lawand Jake Rapp, that are made on the posts.

VII. Infrastructure for a Feed

A. Tables Used to Create a Feed

FIG. 9A shows an example of a plurality of tables that may be used intracking events and creating feeds according to some implementations.The tables of FIG. 9A may have entries added, or potentially removed, aspart of tracking events in the database from which feed items arecreates or that correspond to feed items. In one implementation, eachtenant has its own set of tables that are created based on criteriaprovided by the tenant.

An event hifeed tracked update table 910 can provide a hifeed trackedupdate of events from which feed items are created. In one aspect, theevents are for objects that are being tracked. Thus, table 910 can storeand change hifeed tracked updates for feeds, and the changes can bepersisted. In various implementations, event hifeed tracked update table910 can have columns of event ID 911, object ID 912 (also called parentID), and created by ID 913. The event ID 911 can uniquely identify aparticular event and can start at 1 (or other number or value).

Each new event can be added chronologically with a new event ID, whichmay be incremented in order. An object ID 912 can be used to track whichrecord or user's profile is being changed. For example, the object IDcan correspond to the record whose field is being changed or the userwhose feed is receiving a post. The created by ID 913 can track the userwho is performing the action that results in the event, e.g., the userthat is changing the field or that is posting a message to the profileof another user.

In some other implementations, event hifeed tracked update table 910 canhave one or more of the following variables with certain attributes:ORGANIZATION_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), FEEDS_ENTITY_HIFEED TRACKEDUPDATE_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), PARENT_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), CREATED_BYbeing CHAR(15 BYTE), CREATED_DATE being a variable of type DATE,DIVISION being a NUMBER, KEY_PREFIX being CHAR(3 BYTE), and DELETEDbeing CHAR(1 BYTE). The parent ID can provide an ID of a parent objectin case the change is promulgated to the parent. The key prefix canprovide a key that is unique to a group of records, e.g., custom records(objects). The deleted variable can indicate that the feed items for theevent are deleted, and thus the feed items are not generated. In oneimplementation, the variables for each event entry or any entry in anyof the tables may not be nullable. In another implementation, allentries in the event hifeed tracked update table 910 are used to createfeed items for only one object, as specified by the object ID 912. Forexample, one feed tracked update cannot communicate updates on tworecords, such as updates of an account field and an opportunity field.

In one implementation, a name of an event can also be stored in table910. In one implementation, a tenant can specify events that they wanttracked. In an implementation, event hifeed tracked update table 910 caninclude the name of the field that changed (e.g., old and new values).In another implementation, the name of the field, and the values, arestored in a separate table. Other information about an event (e.g., textof comment, feed tracked update, post or status update) can be stored inevent hifeed tracked update table 910, or in other tables, as is nowdescribed.

A field change table 920 can provide a hifeed tracked update of thechanges to the fields. The columns of table 920 can include an event ID921 (which correlates to the event ID 911), an old value 922 for thefield, and the new value 923 for the field. In one implementation, if anevent changes more than one field value, then there can be an entry foreach field changed. As shown, event ID 921 has two entries for eventE37.

In some other implementations, field change table 920 can have one ormore of the following variables with certain attributes: ORGANIZATION_IDbeing CHAR(15 BYTE), FEEDS_ENTITY_HIFEED TRACKED UPDATE_FIELDS_ID beingCHAR(15 BYTE) and identifying each entry, FEEDS_ENTITY_HIFEED TRACKEDUPDATE_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), FIELD_KEY being VARCHAR2(120 BYTE),DATA_TYPE being CHAR(1 BYTE), OLDVAL_STRING VARCHAR2 being (765 BYTE),NEWVAL_STRING being VARCHAR2(765 BYTE), OLDVAL_FIRST_NAME beingVARCHAR2(765 BYTE), NEWVAL_FIRST_NAME being VARCHAR2(765 BYTE),OLDVAL_LAST_NAME being VARCHAR2(765 BYTE), NEWVAL_LAST_NAME beingVARCHAR2(765 BYTE), OLDVAL_NUMBER being NUMBER, NEWVAL_NUMBER beingNUMBER, OLDVAL_DATE being DATE, NEWVAL_DATE being DATE, and DELETEDbeing CHAR(1 BYTE). In one implementation, one or more of the variablesfor each entry in any of the tables may be nullable.

In one implementation, the data type variable (and/or other variables)is a non-API-insertable field. In another implementation, variablevalues can be derived from the record whose field is being changed.Certain values can be transferred into typed columns old/new valuestring, old/new value number or old/new value date depending upon thederived values. In another implementation, there can exist a data typefor capturing add/deletes for child objects. The child ID can be trackedin the foreign-key column of the record. In yet another implementation,if the field name is pointing to a field in the parent entity, a fieldlevel security (FLS) can be used when a user attempts to a view arelevant feed item. Herein, security levels for objects and fields arealso called access checks and determinations of authorization. In oneaspect, the access can be for create, read, write, update, or delete ofobjects.

In one implementation, the field name (or key) can be either a fieldname of the entity or one of the values in a separate list. For example,changes that do not involve the update of an existing field (e.g., aclose or open) can have a field name specified in an enumerated list.This enumerated list can store “special” field name sentinel values fornon-update actions that a tenant wants to track. In one aspect, the APIjust surfaces these values and the caller has to check the enumeratedvalues to see if it is a special field name.

A comment table 930 can provide a hifeed tracked update of the commentsmade regarding an event, e.g., a comment on a post or a change of afield value. The columns of table 930 can include an event ID 921 (whichcorrelates to the event ID 911), the comment column 932 that stores thetext of the comment, and the time/date 933 of the comment. In oneimplementation, there can be multiple comments for each event. As shown,event ID 921 has two entries for event E37.

In some other implementations, comment table 930 can have one or more ofthe following variables with certain attributes: ORGANIZATION_ID beingCHAR(15 BYTE), FEEDS_COMMENTS_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE) and uniquelyidentifying each comment, PARENT_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), CREATED_BYbeing CHAR(15 BYTE), CREATED_DATE being DATE, COMMENTS beingVARCHAR2(420 BYTE), and DELETED being CHAR(1 BYTE).

A user subscription table 940 can provide a list of the objects beingfollowed (subscribed to) by a user. In one implementation, each entryhas a user ID 941 of the user doing the following and one object ID 942corresponding to the object being followed. In one implementation, theobject being followed can be a record or a user. As shown, the user withID U819 is following object IDs O615 and O489. If user U819 is followingother objects, then additional entries may exist for user U819. Also asshown, user U719 is also following object O615. The user subscriptiontable 940 can be updated when a user adds or deletes an object that isbeing followed.

In some other implementations, user subscription table 940 can becomposed of two tables (one for records being followed and one for usersbeing followed). One table can have one or more of the followingvariables with certain attributes: ORGANIZATION_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE),ENTITY_SUBSCRIPTION_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), PARENT_ID being CHAR(15BYTE), CREATED_BY being CHAR(15 BYTE), CREATED_DATE being DATE, andDELETED being CHAR(1 BYTE). Another table can have one or more of thefollowing variables with certain attributes: ORGANIZATION_ID beingCHAR(15 BYTE), USER_SUBSCRIPTIONS_ID being CHAR(15 BYTE), USER_ID beingCHAR(15 BYTE), CREATED_BY being CHAR(15 BYTE), and CREATED_DATE beingDATE.

In one implementation, regarding a profile feed and a news feed, theseare read-only views on the event hifeed tracked update table 910specialized for these feed types. Conceptually the news feed can be asemi-join between the entity subscriptions table 940 and the eventhifeed tracked update table 910 on the object IDs 912 and 942 for theuser. In one aspect, these entities can have polymorphic parents and canbe subject to a number of restrictions detailed herein, e.g., to limitthe cost of sharing checks.

In one implementation, entity feeds are modeled in the API as a feedassociate entity (e.g., AccountFeed, CaseFeed, etc). A feed associateentity includes information composed of events (e.g., event IDs) foronly one particular record type. Such a list can limit the query (andsharing checks) to a specific record type. In one aspect, thisstructuring of the entity feeds can make the query run faster. Forexample, a request for a feed of a particular account can include therecord type of account. In one implementation, an account feed table canthen be searched, where the table has account record IDs andcorresponding event IDs or pointers to particular event entries in eventhifeed tracked update table 910. Since the account feed table onlycontains some of the records (not all), the query can run faster.

In one implementation, there may be objects with no events listed in theevent hifeed tracked update table 910, even though the record is beingtracked. In this case, the database service can return a resultindicating that no feed items exist.

In another implementation, tables can also exist for audit tracking,e.g., to examine that operations of the system (e.g., access checks) areperforming accurately. In one implementation, audit change-hifeedtracked update tables can be persisted (e.g., in bulk) synchronously inthe same transaction as feed events are added to event hifeed trackedupdate table 910. In another implementation, entries to the two sets oftable can be persisted in asynchronous manner (e.g., by forking a bulkupdate into a separate java thread). In one aspect, some updates to anyof the tables can get lost if the instance of the table goes down whilethe update has not yet finished. This asynchronous manner can limit animpact performance on save operations. In some implementations, a field“persistence type” (tri state: AUDIT, FEEDS or BOTH) can be added tocapture user preferences, as opposed to being hard coded.

B. Feed Item

A feed item can represent an individual field change of a record,creation and deletion of a record, or other events being tracked for arecord or a user. In one implementation, all of the feed items in asingle transaction (event) can be grouped together and have the sameevent ID. A single transaction relates to the operations that can beperformed in a single communication with the database. In anotherimplementation where a feed is an object of the database, a feed itemcan be a child of a profile feed, news feed, or entity feed. If a feeditem is added to multiple feeds, the feed item can be replicated as achild of each feed to which the feed item is added.

In one implementation, a feed item is visible only when its parent feedis visible, which can be the same as needing read access on the feed'sparent (which can be by the type of record or by a specific record). Thefeed item's field may be only visible when allowed under field-levelsecurity (FLS). Unfortunately, this can mean that the parent feed may bevisible, but the child may not be because of FLS. Such access rules aredescribed in more detail below. In one implementation, a feed item canbe read-only. In this implementation, after being created, the feed itemcannot be changed.

In multi-currency organizations, a feed item can have an extra currencycode field. This field can give the currency code for the currency valuein this field. In one aspect, the value is undefined when the data typeis anything other than currency.

C. Feed Comment

In some implementations, a comment exists as an item that depends fromfeed tracked updates, posts, status updates, and other items that areindependent of each other. Thus, a feed comment object can exist as achild object of a feed item object. For example, comment table 930 canbe considered a child table of event hifeed tracked update table 910. Inone implementation, a feed comment can be a child of a profile feed,news feed, or entity feed that is separate from other feed items.

In various implementations, a feed comment can have various permissionsfor the following actions. For read permission, a feed comment can bevisible if the parent feed is visible. For create permission, if a userhas access to the feed (which can be tracked by the ID of the parentfeed), the user can add a comment. For delete, only a user with modifyall data permission or a user who added the comment can delete thecomment. Also delete permission can require access on the parent feed.An update of a comment can be restricted, and thus not be allowed.

In one implementation, regarding a query restriction, a feed commentcannot be queried directly, but can be queried only via the parent feed.An example is “select id, parentid, (select . . . from feedcomment) fromentityfeed”. In another implementation, a feed comment can be directlyqueries, e.g., by querying comment table 930. A query could include thetext of a comment or any other column of the table.

In another implementation, regarding soft delete behavior, a feedcomment table does not have a soft delete column. A soft delete allowsan undelete action. In one implementation, a record can have a softdelete. Thus, when the record is deleted, the feed (and its children)can be soft deleted. Therefore, in one aspect, a feed comment cannot beretrieved via the “query” verb (which would retrieve only the comment),but can be retrieved via “queryAll” verb though. An example isqueryAll(“select id, (select id, commentbody from feedcomments) fromaccountfeed where parentid=‘001x000xxx3MkADAA0’”); // where‘001x000xxx3MkADAA0’ has been soft deleted. When a hard delete (aphysical delete) happens, the comment can be hard deleted from thedatabase.

In one implementation, regarding an implicit delete, feeds with commentsare not deleted by a reaper (a routine that performs deletion). Inanother implementation, a user cannot delete a feed. In yet anotherimplementation, upon lead convert (e.g., to an opportunity or contact),the feed items of the lead can be hard deleted. This implementation canbe configured to perform such a deletion for any change in record type.In various implementations, only the comments are hard deleted upon alead convert, other convert, or when the object is deleted (as mentionedabove).

In one implementation, viewing a feed pulls up the most recent messagesor feed tracked updates (e.g., 25) and searches the most recent (e.g.,4) comments for each feed item. The comments can be identified via thecomment table 930. In one implementation, a user can request to see morecomments, e.g., by selecting a see more link.

In some implementations, user feeds and/or entity feeds have a lastcomment date field. In various implementations, the last comment datefield is stored as a field of a record or a user profile. For feeds withno comments, this can be the same as the created date. Whenever a newcomment is created, the associated feed's last comment date can beupdated with the created date of the comment. The last comment date isunchanged if a feed comment is deleted. A use case is to allow people toorder their queries to see the feeds, which have been most recentlycommented on.

D. Creating Custom Feeds by Customizing the Event Hifeed Tracked UpdateTable

In some implementations, a tenant (e.g., through an administrator) or aspecific user of a tenant can specify the types of events for which feeditems are created. A user can add more events or remove events from alist of events that get added to the event hifeed tracked update table910. In one implementation, a trigger can be added as a piece of code,rule, or item on a list for adding a custom event to the event hifeedtracked update table 910. These custom events can provide customers theability to create their own custom feeds and custom feed items toaugment or replace implicitly generated feeds via event hifeed trackedupdate table 910. Implicitly generated feed data can be created whenfeed-tracking is enabled for certain entities/field-names. In oneimplementation, in order to override implicit feeds, feed tracking canbe turned off and then triggers can be defined by the user to add eventsto the event hifeed tracked update table 910. In other implementations,users are not allowed to override the default list of events that areadded to table 910, and thus cannot define their own triggers for havingevents tracked.

For example, upon lead convert or case close, a default action to betaken by the system may be to add multiple events to event hifeedtracked update table 910. If a customer (e.g., a tenant or a specificuser) does not want each of these events to show up as feed items, thecustomer can turn off tracking for the entities and generate customfeeds by defining customized triggers (e.g., by using an API) upon theevents. As another example, although data is not changed, a customer maystill want to track an action on a record (e.g., status changes if notalready being tracked, views by certain people, retrieval of data,etc.).

In one implementation, if a user does not want a feed item to begenerated upon every change on a given field, but only if the changeexceeds a certain threshold or range, then such custom feeds can beconditionally generated with the customized triggers. In oneimplementation, the default tracking for the record or user may beturned off for this customization so that the events are onlyconditionally tracked. In another implementation, a trigger can bedefined that deletes events that are not desired, so that defaulttracking can still be turned on for a particular object type. Suchconditional tracking can be used for other events as well.

In some implementations, defining triggers to track certain events canbe done as follows. A user can define an object type to track. Thisobject type can be added to a list of objects that can be tracked for aparticular tenant. The tenant can remove object types from this list aswell. Custom objects and standard objects can be on the list, which may,for example, be stored in cache or RAM of a server or in the database.Generally only one such list exists for a tenant, and users do not haveindividual lists for themselves, although in some implementations, theymay particularly when the number of users in a tenant is small.

In one implementation, a tenant can select which records of an objecttype are to be tracked. In another implementation, once an object typeis added to the tracking list of object types, then all records of thattype are tracked. The tenant can then specify the particulars of how thetracking is to be performed. For example, the tenant can specifytriggers as described above, fields to be tracked, or any of thecustomizations mentioned herein.

In some implementations, when a feed is defined as an object in thedatabase (e.g., as a child object of entity records that can betracked), a particular instance of the feed object (e.g., for aparticular record) can be create-able and delete-able. In oneimplementation, if a user has access to a record then the user cancustomize the feed for the record. In one implementation, a record maybe locked to prevent customization of its feed.

One method of creating a custom feed for users of a database systemaccording to implementations is now described. Any of the followingblocks can be performed wholly or partially with the database system,and in particular by one or more processor of the database system.

In block A, one or more criteria specifying which events are to betracked for possible inclusion into a feed to be displayed are receivedfrom a tenant. In block B, data indicative of an event is received. Inblock C, the event is analyzed to determine if the criteria aresatisfied. In block D, if the criteria are satisfied, at least a portionof the data is added to a table (e.g., one or more of the tables in FIG.9A) that tracks events for inclusion into at least one feed for a userof the tenant. The feed in which feed items of an event may ultimatelybe displayed can be a news feed, record feed, or a profile feed.

E. Creating Custom Feeds with Filtering

After feed items have been generated, they can be filtered so that onlycertain feed items are displayed, which may be tailored to a specifictenant and/or user. In one implementation, a user can specify changes toa field that meet certain criteria for the feed item to show up in afeed displayed to the user, e.g., a news feed or even an entity feeddisplayed directly to the user. In one implementation, the criteria canbe combined with other factors (e.g., number of feed items in the feed)to determine which feed items to display. For instance, if a smallnumber of feed items exist (e.g., below a threshold), then all of thefeed items may be displayed.

In one implementation, a user can specify the criteria via a query onthe feed items in his/her new feed, and thus a feed may only returnobjects of a certain type, certain types of events, feed tracked updatesabout certain fields, and other criteria mentioned herein. Messages canalso be filtered according to some criteria, which may be specified in aquery. Such an added query can be added onto a standard query that isused to create the news feed for a user. A first user could specify theusers and records that the first user is following in this manner, aswell as identify the specific feed items that the first user wants tofollow. The query could be created through a graphical interface oradded by a user directly in a query language. Other criteria couldinclude receiving only posts directed to a particular user or record, asopposed to other feed items.

In one implementation, the filters can be run by defining code triggers,which run when an event, specific or otherwise, occurs. The triggercould then run to perform the filtering at the time the event occurs orwhen a user (who has certain defined triggers, that is configured for aparticular user) requests a display of the feed. A trigger could searchfor certain terms (e.g., vulgar language) and then remove such terms ornot create the feed item. A trigger can also be used to send the feeditem to a particular person (e.g., an administrator) who does notnormally receive the feed item were it not for the feed item containingthe flagged terms.

F. Access Checks

In one implementation, a user can access a feed of a record if the usercan access the record. The security rules for determining whether a userhas access to a record can be performed in a variety of ways, some ofwhich are described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 8,095,531, titledMETHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING ACCESS TO CUSTOM OBJECTS IN ADATABASE, by Weissman et al., issued on Jan. 10, 2012, and herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes. Forexample, a security level table can specify whether a user can see aparticular type of record and/or particular records. In oneimplementation, a hierarchy of positions within a tenant is used. Forexample, a manager can inherit the access levels of employees that themanager supervises. Field level security (FLS) can also be used todetermine whether a particular feed tracked update about an update to afield can be seen by the user. The field change table 920 can be used toidentify a field name or field ID, and then whether the user has readaccess to that field can be determined from an FLS table. For example,if a user could not see a field of a social security number, the feed ofthe user provided to the user would not include any feed items relatedto the social security number field.

In one implementation, a user can edit a feed of a record if the userhas access to the record, e.g., deleting or editing a feed item. Inanother implementation, a user (besides an administrator) cannot edit afeed item, except for performing an action from which a feed item can becreated. In one implementation, a user is required to have access to aparticular record and field for a feed item to be created based on anaction of the user. In this case, an administrator can be considered tobe a user with MODIFY-ALL-DATA security level. In yet anotherimplementation, a user who created the record can edit the feed.

G. Posts

In one implementation, the text of posts are stored in a child table(post table 950), which can be cross-referenced with event hifeedtracked update table 910. Post table 950 can include event ID 951 (tocross-reference with event ID 911), post text 952 to store the text ofthe post, and time/date 953. An entry in post table 950 can beconsidered a feed post object. Posts for a record can also be subject toaccess checks. In one implementation, if a user can view a record thenall of the posts can be seen, i.e. there is not an additional level ofsecurity check as there is for FLS. In another implementation, anadditional security check could be done, e.g., by checking on whethercertain keywords (or phrases) exist in the post. For instance, a postmay not be not provided to specified users if a certain keyword exists,or only provided to specified users if a keyword exists. In anotherimplementation, a table can exist for status updates.

VIII. Subscribing to Users and Records to Follow

As described above, a user can follow users, groups, and records.Implementations can provide mechanisms for a user to manage which users,groups, and records that the user is currently following. In oneimplementation, a user can be limited to the number of users and records(collectively or separately) that the user can follow. For example, auser may be restricted to only following 10 users and 15 records, or asanother example, 25 total. Alternatively, the user may be permitted tofollow more or less users.

In one implementation, a user can go to a page of a record and thenselect to follow that object (e.g., with a button marked “follow” or“join”). In another implementation, a user can search for a record andhave the matching records show up in a list. The search can includecriteria of records that the user might want to follow. Such criteriacan include the owner, the creation date, last comment date, andnumerical values of particular fields (e.g., an opportunity with a valueof more than $10,000).

A follow button (or other activation object) can then reside next toeach record in the resulting list, and the follow button can be selectedto start following the record. Similarly, a user can go to a profilepage of a user and select to follow the user, or a search for users canprovide a list, where one or more users can be selected for followingfrom the list. The selections of subscribing and unsubscribing can addand delete rows in table 920.

In some implementations, a subscription center acts as a centralizedplace in a database application (e.g., application platform 18) tomanage which records a user subscribes to, and which field updates theuser wants to see in feed tracked updates. The subscription center canuse a subscription table to keep track of the subscriptions of varioususers. In one implementation, the subscription center shows a list ofall the items (users and records) a user is subscribed to. In anotherimplementation, a user can unsubscribe to subscribed objects from thesubscription center.

A. Automatic Subscription

In one implementation, an automatic subscription feature can ensure thata user is receiving certain feeds. In this manner, a user does not haveto actively select certain objects to follow. Also, a tenant can ensurethat a user is following objects that the user needs to be following.

In various implementations for automatically following users, a defaultfor small organizations can be to follow everyone. For bigorganizations, the default can be to follow a manager and peers. If auser is a manager, the default can be to follow the manager'ssupervisor, peers, and people that the manager supervises(subordinates). In other implementations for automatically followingrecords, records that the user owns may be automatically followed and/orrecords recently viewed (or changed) may be automatically followed.

In one example, a new record is created. The owner (not necessarily theuser who created the entity) is subscribed to the entity. If ownershipis changed, the new owner may automatically be subscribed to follow theentity. Also, after a lead convert, the user doing the lead convert maybe automatically subscribed to the new account, opportunity, or contactresulting from the lead convert. In one implementation, the autosubscription is controlled by user preference. That is a user or tenantcan have the auto subscribe feature enabled or not. In one aspect, thedefault is to have the auto-subscribe turned on.

FIG. 9B shows a flowchart of an example of a method 900 forautomatically subscribing a user to an object in a database system,performed in accordance with some implementations. Any of the followingblocks can be performed wholly or partially with the database system,and in particular by one or more processor of the database system.

In block 901, one or more properties of an object stored in the databasesystem are received. The properties can be received from administratorsof the database system, or from users of the database system (which maybe an administrator of a customer organization). The properties can berecords or users, and can include any of the fields of the object thatare stored in the database system. Examples of properties of a recordinclude: an owner of the record, a user that converted the record fromone record type to another record type, whether the first user hasviewed the record, and a time the first user viewed the record. Examplesof properties of a user include: which organization (tenant) the user isassociated with, the second user's position in the same organization,and which other users the user had e-mailed or worked with on projects.

In block 902, the database system receives one or more criteria aboutwhich users are to automatically follow the object. The criteria can bereceived from administrators of the database system, or from one or moreusers of the database system. The users may be an administrator of acustomer organization, which can set tenant-wide criteria or criteriafor specific users (who may also set the criteria themselves). Examplesof the criteria can include: an owner or creator of a record is tofollow the record, subordinates of an owner or creator of a record areto follow the record, a user is to follow records recently viewed(potentially after a specific number of views), records that a user haschanged values (potentially with a date requirement), records created byothers in a same business group as the user. Examples of the criteriacan also include: a user is to follow his/her manager, the user's peers,other users in the same business group as the user, and other users thatthe user has e-mailed or worked with on a project. The criteria can bespecific to a user or group of users (e.g., users of a tenant).

In block 903, the database system determines whether the one or moreproperties of the object satisfy the one or more criteria for a firstuser. In one implementation, this determination can occur by firstobtaining the criteria and then determining objects that satisfy thecriteria. The determination can occur periodically, at time of creationof an object, or at other times. If different users have differentcriteria, then the criteria for a particular user or group could besearched at the same time. Since users of different tenants normallycannot view objects of another tenant, certain criteria does not have tobe checked. In another implementation, this determination can occur bylooking at certain properties and then identifying any criteria that aremet. In yet another implementation, the criteria and properties can beused to find users that satisfy the criteria.

In block 904, if the criteria are satisfied, the object is associatedwith the first user. The association can be in a list that storesinformation as to what objects are being followed by the first user.User subscription table 940 is an example of such a list. In oneimplementation, the one or more criteria are satisfied if one propertysatisfies at least one criterion. Thus, if the criteria are that a userfollows his/her manager and the object is the user's manager, then thefirst user will follow the object.

In one implementation, a user can also be automatically unsubscribed,e.g., if a certain action happens. The action could be a change in theuser's position within the organization, e.g., a demotion or becoming acontractor. As another example, if a case gets closed, then usersfollowing the case may be automatically unsubscribed.

B. Feed and Subscription API

In one implementation, a feed and subscription center API can enabletenants to provide mechanisms for tracking and creating feed items,e.g., as described above for creating custom feeds by allowing users toadd custom events for tracking. For example, after some initial feeditems are created (e.g., by administrators of the database system),outside groups (e.g., tenants or software providers selling software tothe tenants) can ‘enable objects’ for feeds through a standard API. Thegroups can then integrate into the subscription center and the feedtracked update feeds on their own. In one implementation, the feed andsubscription center API can use a graphical user interface implementedfor the default feed tracking. In one implementation, API examplesinclude subscribing to an entity by creating a new entity subscriptionobject for a particular user ID, or for all users of a tenant (e.g.,user subscription table 940). In one implementation, obtaining allsubscriptions for a given user can be performed by using a query, suchas “select . . . from EntitySubscription where userid=‘ . . . ’”.

Some implementations have restriction on non-admin users, e.g., thosewithout view all data permissions (VAD). One restriction can be a limitclause on entity subscription queries (e.g., queries on usersubscription table 940), e.g., where the limit of the number ofoperations is less than 100. In one implementation, users are notrequired to specify an order-by, but if an order-by is specified theycan only order on fields on the entity subscription entity. In oneimplementation, filters on entity subscription can likewise only specifyfields on the entity subscription entity. In one aspect, the object IDbeing followed can be sorted or filtered, but not the object name.

In one implementation, one or more restrictions can also be placed onthe identification of feed items in a feed that a user can access. Forexample, if a low-level user (i.e. user can access few objects) isattempting to see a profile feed of a high level user, a maximum numberof checks (e.g., 500) for access rights may be allowed. Such arestriction can minimize a cost of a feed request. In someimplementations, there are restriction on the type of queries (e.g.,fields for filtering) allowed to construct on feeds (e.g., on tables inFIG. 9A).

C. Sharing

As mentioned above, users may be restricted from seeing records fromother tenants, as well as certain records from the tenant to which theuser belongs (e.g., the user's employer). Sharing rules can refer to theaccess rules that restrict a user from seeing records that the user isnot authorized to see or access. Additionally, in one implementation, auser may be restricted to only seeing certain fields of a record,field-level security (FLS).

In an implementation, access rule checks are done upon subscription. Forexample, a user is not allowed to subscribe to a record or type ofrecord that the user cannot access. In one aspect, this can minimize(but not necessarily eliminate) cases where a user subscribes toentities they cannot access. Such cases can slow down news feed queries,when an access check is performed (which can end up removing much of thefeed items). Thus, a minimization of access checks can speed upoperation. In another implementation, when feed items are createddynamically, access rule checks may be done dynamically at the time ofsubsequent access, and not upon subscription or in addition to at timeof subscription.

An example case where access checks are still performed is when a firstuser follows a second user, but the second user performs some actions onrecords or is following records that the first user is not allowed tosee. The first user may be allowed to follow the second user, and thusthe subscription is valid even though the first user may not be able tosee all of the feed items. Before a feed tracked update is provided to anews feed of the first user, a security check may be performed tovalidate whether the first user has access rights to the feed item. Ifnot, the feed item is not displayed to the first user. In oneimplementation, users can be blocked from feed items that containcertain terms, symbols, account numbers, etc. In one implementation, anyuser can follow another user. In another implementation, users may berestricted as to which users, objects, and/or records he/she can follow.

Regarding viewing privileges of a feed, in one implementation, a usercan always see all of his own subscriptions (even if he's lost readaccess to a record). For example, a user can become a contractor, andthen the user may lose access to some records. But, the user may stillsee that he/she is following the object. This can help if there is alimit to the number of objects that can be followed. To unsubscribe auser may need to know what they are following so they can unsubscribeand subscribe to objects the user can see. In another implementation,for access to other people's subscriptions, a user can be required toneed read-access on the record-id to see the subscription. In someimplementations, users with authorization to modify all data cancreate/delete any subscription. In other implementations, a user cancreate/delete subscriptions only for that user, and not anyone else.

D. Configuration of Which Field to Follow

There can be various feed settings for which feed items get added toprofile and record feeds, and which get added to news feeds. In oneimplementation, for profile feeds and entity feeds, feed tracked updatescan be written for all standard and custom fields on the supportedobjects. In one implementation, feed settings can be set to limit howmany and which fields of a record are tracked for determining whether afeed tracked update is to be generated. For example, a user oradministrator can choose specific fields to track and/or certain onesnot to track. In another implementation, there is a separate limit forthe number of trackable fields (e.g., 20) for a record. Thus, onlycertain changes may be tracked in an entity hifeed tracked update andshow up in the feed. In yet another implementation, default fields maybe chosen for tracking, where the defaults can be exposed in thesubscriptions center.

IX. Adding Items to a Feed

As described above, a feed includes feed items, which include feedtracked updates and messages, as defined herein. Various feeds can begenerated. For example, a feed can be generated about a record or abouta user. Then, users can view these feeds. A user can separately view afeed of a record or user, e.g., by going to a home page for the user orthe record. As described above, a user can also follow another user orrecord and receive the feed items of those feeds through a separate feedapplication (e.g., in a page or window), which is termed “chatter” incertain examples. The feed application can provide each of the feedsthat a user is following and, in some examples, can combine variousfeeds in a single information feed.

A feed generator can refer to any software program running on aprocessor or a dedicated processor (or combination thereof) that cangenerate feed items (e.g., feed tracked updates or messages) and combinethem into a feed. In one implementation, the feed generator can generatea feed item by receiving a feed tracked update or message, identifyingwhat feeds the item should be added to, and adding the feed. Adding thefeed can include adding additional information (metadata) to the feedtracked update or message (e.g., adding a document, sender of message, adetermined importance, etc.). The feed generator can also check to makesure that no one sees feed tracked updates for data that they don't haveaccess to see (e.g., according to sharing rules). A feed generator canrun at various times to pre-compute feeds or to compute themdynamically, or combinations thereof.

In one implementation, the feed generator can de-dupe events (i.e.prevent duplicates) that may come in from numerous records (and users).For example, since a feed tracked update can be published to multiplefeeds (e.g., John Choe changed the Starbucks Account Status) and aperson can be subscribed to both the Starbucks account and John Choe,implementations can filter out duplicates before adding or displayingthe items in a news feed. Thus, the Feed Generator can collapse eventswith multiple records and users for a single transaction into a singlefeed tracked update and ensure the right number of feed tracked updatesfor the particular feed. In some implementations, an action by a userdoes not create a feed item for that user (e.g., for a profile feed ofthat user), and it is only the feed of the object being acted upon(e.g., updated) for which a feed item is created. Thus, there should notbe duplicates. For example, if someone updates the status of a record,the feed item is only for the record and not the user.

In one implementation, processor 417 in FIG. 4 can identify an eventthat meets criteria for a feed tracked update, and then generate thefeed tracked update. Processor 417 can also identify a message. Forexample, an application interface can have certain mechanisms forsubmitting a message (e.g., “submit” buttons on a profile page, detailpage of a record, “comment” button on post), and use of these mechanismscan be used to identify a message to be added to a table used to createa feed or added directly to a list of feed items ready for display.

A. Adding Items to a Pre-Computed Feed

In some implementations, a feed of feed items is created before a userrequests the feed. Such an implementation can run fast, but have highoverall costs for storage. In one implementation, once a profile feed ora record feed has been created, a feed item (messages and feed trackedupdates) can be added to the feed. The feed can exist in the databasesystem in a variety of ways, such as a related list. The feed caninclude mechanisms to remove items as well as add them.

As described above, a news feed can be an aggregated feed of all therecord feeds and profile feeds to which a user has subscribed. The newsfeed can be provided on the home page of the subscribing user.Therefore, a news feed can be created by and exist for a particularuser. For example, a user can subscribe to receive entity feeds ofcertain records that are of interest to the user, and to receive profilefeeds of people that are of interest (e.g., people on a same team, thatwork for the user, are a boss of the user, etc.). A news feed can tell auser about all the actions across all the records (and people) whom haveexplicitly (or implicitly) been subscribed to via the subscriptionscenter (described above).

In one implementation, only one instance of each feed tracked update isshown on a user's news feed, even if the feed tracked update ispublished in multiple entities to which the user is subscribed. In oneaspect, there may be delays in publishing news articles. For example,the delay may be due to queued up messages for asynchronous entityhifeed tracked update persistence. Different feeds may have differentdelays (e.g., delay for new feeds, but none of profile and entityfeeds). In another implementation, certain feed tracked updatesregarding a subscribed profile feed or an entity feed are not shownbecause the user is not allowed access, e.g., due to sharing rules(which restrict which users can see which data). Also, in oneimplementation, data of the record that has been updated (which includescreation) can be provided in the feed (e.g., a file or updated value ofa feed can be added as a flash rendition).

Examples are provided below as how it can be determined which feed itemsto add to which news feeds. In one implementation, the addition of itemsto a news feed is driven by the following user. For example, the user'sprofile can be checked to determine objects the user is following, andthe database may be queried to determine updates to these objects. Inanother implementation, the users and records being followed drive theaddition of items to a news feed. Implementations can also combine theseand other aspects. In one implementation, a database system can befollower-driven if the number of subscriptions (users and records theuser is following) is small. For example, since the number subscriptionsare small, then changes to a small number of objects need to be checkedfor the follower.

Regarding implementations that are follower-driven, one implementationcan have a routine run for a particular user. The routine knows theusers and records that the user is following. The routine can poll thedatabase system for new feed tracked updates and messages about theusers and records that are being followed. In one implementation, thepolling can be implemented as queries. In one implementation, theroutine can run at least partially (even wholly) on a user device.

Regarding implementations where a news feed is driven by the record (oruser) being followed, processor 417 can identify followers of the recordafter a feed item is added to the record feed. Processor 417 canretrieve a list of the followers from the database system. The list canbe associated with the record, and can be stored as a related list orother object that is a field or child of the record.

In one implementation, profile and record feeds can be updatedimmediately with a new feed item after an action is taken or an eventoccurs. A news feed can also be updated immediately. In anotherimplementation, a news feed can be updated in batch jobs, which can runat periodic times.

B. Dynamically Generating Feeds

In some implementations, a feed generator can generate the feed itemsdynamically when a user requests to see a particular feed, e.g., aprofile feed, entity feed, or the user's news feed. In oneimplementation, the most recent feed items (e.g., top 50) are generatedfirst. In one aspect, the other feed items can be generated as abackground process, e.g., not synchronously with the request to view thefeed. However, since the background process is likely to complete beforea user gets to the next 50 feed items, the feed generation may appearsynchronous. In another aspect, the most recent feed items may or maynot include comments, e.g., that are tied to feed tracked updates orposts.

In one implementation, the feed generator can query the appropriatesubset of tables shown in FIG. 9A and/or other tables as necessary, togenerate the feed items for display. For example, the feed generator canquery the event hifeed tracked update table 910 for the updates thatoccurred for a particular record. The ID of the particular record can bematched against the ID of the record. In one implementation, changes toa whole set of records can be stored in one table. The feed generatorcan also query for status updates, posts, and comments, each of whichcan be stored in different parts of a record or in separate tables, asshown in FIG. 9A. What gets recorded in the entity hifeed tracked updatetable (as well as what is displayed) can be controlled by a feedsettings page in setup, which can be configurable by an administratorand can be the same for the entire organization, as is described abovefor custom feeds.

In one implementation, there can be two feed generators. For example,one generator can generate the record and profile feeds and anothergenerator can generate news feeds. For the former, the feed generatorcan query identifiers of the record or the user profile. For the latter,the news feed generator can query the subscribed profile feeds andrecord feeds, e.g., user subscription table 940. In one implementation,the feed generator looks at a person's subscription center to decidewhich feeds to query for and return a list of feed items for the user.The list can be de-duped, e.g., by looking at the event number andvalues for the respective table, such as field name or ID, comment ID,or other information.

C. Adding Information to Feed Hifeed Tracked Update Tables

FIG. 10 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1000 for savinginformation to feed tracking tables, performed in accordance with someimplementations. In one implementation, some of the blocks may beperformed regardless of whether a specific event or part of an event(e.g., only one field of an update is being tracked) is being tracked.In various implementations, a processor or set of processors (hardwiredor programmed) can perform method 1000 and any other method describedherein.

In block 1010, data indicative of an event is received. The data mayhave a particular identifier that specifies the event. For example,there may be a particular identifier for a field update. In anotherimplementation, the transaction may be investigated for keywordsidentifying the event (e.g., terms in a query indicating a close, changefield, or create operations).

In block 1020, it is determined whether the event is being tracked forinclusion into feed tables. The determination of what is being trackedcan be based on a tenant's configuration as described above. In oneaspect, the event has an actor (person performing an event), and anobject of the event (e.g., record or user profile being changed).

In block 1030, the event is written to an event hifeed tracked updatetable (e.g., table 910). In one implementation, this feed trackingoperation can be performed in the same transaction that performs a saveoperation for updating a record. In another implementation, atransaction includes at least two roundtrip database operations, withone roundtrip being the database save (write), and the second databaseoperation being the saving of the update in the hifeed tracked updatetable. In one implementation, the event hifeed tracked update table ischronological. In another implementation, if user A posts on user B'sprofile, then user A is under the “created by” 913 and user B is underthe object ID 912.

In block 1040, a field change table (e.g., field change table 920) canbe updated with an entry having the event identifier and fields thatwere changed in the update. In one implementation, the field changetable is a child table of the event hifeed tracked update table. Thistable can include information about each of the fields that are changed.For example, for an event that changes the name and balance for anaccount record, an entry can have the event identifier, the old and newname, and the old and new balance. Alternatively, each field change canbe in a different row with the same event identifier. The field name orID can also be included to determine which field the values areassociated.

In block 1050, when the event is a post, a post table (e.g., post table950) can be updated with an entry having the event identifier and textof the post. In one implementation, the field change table is a childtable of the event hifeed tracked update table. In anotherimplementation, the text can be identified in the transaction (e.g., aquery command), stripped out, and put into the entry at the appropriatecolumn. The various tables described herein can be combined or separatedin various ways. For example, the post table and the field change tablemay be part of the same table or distinct tables, or may includeoverlapping portions of data.

In block 1060, a comment is received for an event and the comment isadded to a comment table (e.g., comment table 930). The comment could befor a post or an update of a record, from which a feed tracked updatecan be generated for display. In one implementation, the text can beidentified in the transaction (e.g., a query command), stripped out, andput into the entry at the appropriate column.

D. Reading Information from Feed Hifeed Tracked Update Tables

FIG. 11 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1100 for reading afeed item as part of generating a feed for display, performed inaccordance with some implementations. In one implementation, the feeditem may be read as part of creating a feed for a record.

In block 1110, a query is received for an events history table (e.g.,event hifeed tracked update table 910) for events related to aparticular record. In one implementation, the query includes anidentifier of the record for which the feed is being requested. Invarious implementations, the query may be initiated from a detail pageof the record, a home page of a user requesting the record feed, or froma listing of different records (e.g., obtained from a search or frombrowsing).

In block 1120, the user's security level can be checked to determine ifthe user can view the record feed. Typically, a user can view a recordfeed, if the user can access the record. This security check can beperformed in various ways. In one implementation, a first table ischecked to see if the user has a classification (e.g., a security levelthat allows him to view records of the given type). In anotherimplementation, a second table is checked to see if the user is allowedto see the specific record. The first table can be checked before thesecond table, and both tables can be different sections of a same table.If the user has requested the feed from the detail page of the record,one implementation can skip the security level check for the recordsince the check was already done when the user requested to view thedetail page.

In one implementation, a security check is determined upon each requestto view the record feed. Thus, whether or not a feed item is displayedto a user is determined based on access rights, e.g., when the userrequests to see a feed of a record or a news feed of all the objects theuser is following. In this manner, if a user's security changes, a feedautomatically adapts to the user's security level when it is changed. Inanother implementation, a feed can be computed before being requestedand a subsequent security check can be made to determine whether theperson still has access right to view the feed items. The security(access) check may be at the field level, as well as at the recordlevel.

In block 1130, if the user can access the record, a field level securitytable can be checked to determine whether the user can see particularfields. In one implementation, only those fields are displayed to theuser. Alternatively, a subset of those the user has access to isdisplayed. The field level security check may optionally be performed atthe same time and even using the same operation as the record levelcheck. In addition, the record type check may also be performed at thistime. If the user can only see certain fields, then any feed itemsrelated to those fields (e.g., as determined from field change table920) can be removed from the feed being displayed.

In block 1140, the feed items that the user has access to are displayed.In one implementation, a predetermined number (e.g., 20) of feed itemsare displayed at a time. The method can display the first 20 feed itemsthat are found to be readable, and then determine others while the useris viewing the first 20. In another implementation, the other feed itemsare not determined until the user requests to see them, e.g., byactivating a see more link.

FIG. 12 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1200 for reading afeed item of a profile feed for display, performed in accordance withsome implementations. In one implementation, the query includes anidentifier of the user profile feed that is being requested. Certainblocks may be optional, as is also true for other methods describedherein. For example, security checks may not be performed.

In block 1210, a query is directed to an event hifeed tracked updatetable (e.g., event hifeed tracked update table 910) for events having afirst user as the actor of the event (e.g., creation of an account) oron which the event occurred (e.g., a post to the user's profile). Invarious implementations, the query may be initiated by a second userfrom the user's profile page, a home page of a user requesting theprofile feed (e.g., from a list of users being followed), or from alisting of different users (e.g., obtained from a search or frombrowsing). Various mechanisms for determining aspects of events andobtaining information from tables can be the same across any of themethods described herein.

In block 1220, a security check may also be performed on whether thesecond user can see the first user's profile. In one implementation anyuser can see the profile of another user of the same tenant, and block1220 is optional.

In block 1230, a security (access) check can be performed for the feedtracked updates based on record types, records, and/or fields, as wellsecurity checks for messages. In one implementation, only the feedtracked updates related to records that the person has updated are theones that need security check as the feed items about the user arereadable by any user of the same tenant. Users of other tenants are notnavigable, and thus security can be enforced at a tenant level. Inanother implementation, messages can be checked for keywords or links toa record or field that the second user does not have access.

As users can have different security classifications, it is importantthat a user with a low-level security cannot see changes to records thathave been performed by a user with high-level security. In oneimplementation, each feed item can be checked and then the viewableresults displayed, but this can be inefficient. For example, such asecurity check may take a long time, and the second user would like toget some results sooner rather than later. The following blocksillustrate one implementation of how security might be checked for afirst user that has a lot of feed items, but the second user cannot seemost of them. This implementation can be used for all situations, butcan be effective in the above situation.

In block 1231, a predetermined number of entries are retrieved from theevent hifeed tracked update table (e.g., starting from the most recent,which may be determined from the event identifier). The retrievedentries may just be ones that match the user ID of the query. In oneimplementation, entries are checked to find the entries that areassociated with the user and with a record (i.e. not just posts to theuser account). In another implementation, those entries associated withthe user are allowed to be viewed, e.g., because the second user can seethe profile of the first user as determined in block 1220.

In block 1232, the record identifiers are organized by type and the typeis checked on whether the second user can see the record types. Otherchecks such as whether a record was manually shared (e.g., by the owner)can also be performed. In one implementation, the queries for thedifferent types can be done in parallel.

In block 1233, if a user can see the record type, then a check can beperformed on the specific record. In one implementation, if a user cansee a record type, then the user can see all of the records of thattype, and so this block can be skipped. In another implementation, thesharing model can account for whether a user below the second user(e.g., the second user is a manager) can see the record. In such animplementation, the second user may see such a record. In oneimplementation, if a user cannot see a specific record, then comments onthat record are also not viewable.

In block 1234, field level sharing rules can be used to determinewhether the second user can see information about an update or value ofcertain fields. In one implementation, messages can be analyzed todetermine if reference to a particular field name is made. If so, thenfield level security can be applied to the messages.

In block 1280, blocks 1231-1234 are repeated until a stopping criterionis met. In one implementation, the stopping criteria may be when amaximum number (e.g., 100) of entries that are viewable have beenidentified. In another implementation, the stopping criteria can be thata maximum number (e.g., 500) of entries from the entity hifeed trackedupdate table have been analyzed, regardless of whether the entries areviewable or not.

In one implementation, a news feed can be generated as a combination ofthe profile feeds and the entity feeds, e.g., as described above. In oneimplementation, a list of records and user profiles for the queries inblocks 1110 and 1210 can be obtained form user subscription table 940.In one implementation, there is a maximum number of objects that can befollowed.

In various implementations, the entity hifeed tracked update table canbe queried for any one or more of the following matching variables aspart of determining items for a feed: CreatedDate, CreatedById,CreatedBy.FirstName, CreatedBy.LastName, ParentId, and Parent.Name. Thechild tables can also be queried for any one or more of the followingmatching variables as part of determining items for a feed: DataType,FieldName, OldValue, and NewValue. A query can also specify how theresulting feed items can be sorted for display, e.g., by event number,date, importance, etc. The query can also include a number of items tobe returned, which can be enforced at the server.

The two examples provided above can be done periodically to create thefeeds ahead of time or done dynamically at the time the display of afeed is requested. Such a dynamic calculation can be computationallyintensive for a news feed, particularly if many users and records arebeing followed, although there can be a low demand for storage.Accordingly, one implementation performs some calculations ahead of timeand stores the results in order to create a news feed.

E. Partial Pre-Computing of Items for a Feed

FIG. 13 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1300 of storingevent information for efficient generation of feed items to display in afeed, performed in accordance with some implementations. In variousimplementations, method 1300 can be performed each time an event iswritten to the events hifeed tracked update table, or periodically basedon some other criteria (e.g., every minute, after five updates have beenmade, etc.).

In block 1310, data indicative of an event is received. The data may bethe same and identified in the same way as described for block 1010. Theevent may be written to an event hifeed tracked update table (e.g.,table 910).

In block 1320, the object(s) associated with the event are identified.In various implementations, the object may be identified by according tovarious criteria, such as the record being changed, the user changingthe record, a user posting a message, and a user whose profile themessage is being posted to.

In block 1330, the users following the event are determined. In oneimplementation, one or more objects that are associated with the eventare used to determine the users following the event. In oneimplementation, a subscription table (e.g., table 940) can be used tofind the identified objects. The entries of the identified objects cancontain an identifier (e.g., user ID 941) of each the users followingthe object

In block 1340, the event and the source of the event, e.g., a record(for a record update) or a posting user (for a user-generated post) arewritten to a news feed table along with an event identifier. In oneimplementation, such information is added as a separate entry into thenews feed table along with the event ID. In another implementation, eachof the events for a user is added as a new column for the row of theuser. In yet another implementation, more columns (e.g., columns fromthe other tables) can be added.

News feed table 960 shows an example of such a table with user ID 961and event ID or pointer 962. The table can be organized in any manner.One difference from event hifeed tracked update table 910 is that oneevent can have multiple entries (one for each subscriber) in the newsfeed table 960. In one implementation, all of the entries for a sameuser are grouped together, e.g., as shown. The user U819 is shown asfollowing events E37 and E90, and thus any of the individual feed itemsresulting from those events. In another implementation, any new entriesare added at the end of the table. Thus, all of the followers for a newevent can be added as a group. In such an implementation, the event IDswould generally be grouped together in the table. Of course, the tablecan be sorted in any suitable manner.

In an implementation, if the number of users is small, then the feeditems in one or more of the tables may be written as part of the samewrite transaction. In one implementation, the determination of smalldepends on the number of updates performed for the event (e.g., amaximum number of update operations may be allowed), and if moreoperations are performed, then the addition of the feed items isperformed. In one aspect, the number of operations can be counted by thenumber of rows to be updated, including the rows of the record (whichdepends on the update event), and the rows of the hifeed tracked updatetables, which can depend on the number of followers. In anotherimplementation, if the number of users is large, the rest of the feeditems can be created by batch. In one implementation, the feed items arealways written as part of a different transaction, i.e., by batch job.

In one implementation, security checks can be performed before an entryis added to the news feed table 960. In this manner, security checks canbe performed during batch jobs and may not have to be performed at thetime of requesting a news feed. In one implementation, the event can beanalyzed and if access is not allowed to a feed item of the event, thenan entry is not added. In one aspect, multiple feed items for a sameuser may not result from a same event (e.g., by how an event is definedin table 910), and thus there is no concern about a user missing a feeditem that he/she should be able to view.

In block 1350, a request for a news feed is received from a user. In oneimplementation, the request is obtained when a user navigates to theuser's home page. In another implementation, the user selects a table,link, or other page item that causes the request to be sent.

In block 1360, the news feed table and other tables are accessed toprovide displayable feed items of the news feed. The news feed can thenbe displayed. In one implementation, the news feed table can then bejoined with the event hifeed tracked update table to determine the feeditems. For example, the news feed table 960 can be searched for entrieswith a particular user ID. These entries can be used to identify evententries in event hifeed tracked update table 910, and the properinformation from any child tables can be retrieved. The feed items(e.g., feed tracked updates and messages) can then be generated fordisplay.

In one implementation, the most recent feed items (e.g., 100 mostrecent) are determined first. The other feed items may then bedetermined in a batch process. Thus, the feed item that a user is mostlikely to view can come up first, and the user may not recognize thatthe other feed items are being done in batch. In one implementation, themost recent feed items can be gauged by the event identifiers. Inanother implementation, the feed items with a highest importance levelcan be displayed first. The highest importance being determined by oneor more criteria, such as, who posted the feed item, how recently, howrelated to other feed items, etc.

In one implementation where the user subscription table 940 is used todynamically create a news feed, the query would search the subscriptiontable, and then use the object IDs to search the event hifeed trackedupdate table (one search for each object the user is following). Thus,the query for the news feed can be proportional to the number of objectsthat one was subscribing to. The news feed table allows the intermediateblock of determining the object IDs to be done at an earlier stage sothat the relevant events are already known. Thus, the determination ofthe feed is no longer proportional to the number of object beingfollowed.

In some implementations, a news feed table can include a pointer (asopposed to an event identifier) to the event hifeed tracked update tablefor each event that is being followed by the user. In this manner, theevent entries can immediately be retrieved without having to perform asearch on the event hifeed tracked update table. Security checks can bemade at this time, and the text for the feed tracked updates can begenerated.

X. Display of a Feed

Feeds include messages and feed tracked updates and can show up in manyplaces in an application interface with the database system. In oneimplementation, feeds can be scoped to the context of the page on whichthey are being displayed. For example, how a feed tracked update ispresented can vary depending on which page it is being displayed (e.g.,in news feeds, on a detail page of a record, and even based on how theuser ended up at a particular page). In another implementation, only afinite number of feed items are displayed (e.g., 50). In oneimplementation, there can be a limit specifically on the number of feedtracked updates or messages displayed. Alternatively, the limit can beapplied to particular types of feed tracked updates or messages. Forexample, only the most recent changes (e.g., 5 most recent) for a fieldmay be displayed. Also, the number of fields for which changes aredisplayed can also be limited. Such limits can also be placed on profilefeeds and news feeds. In one implementation, feed items may also besubject to certain filtering criteria before being displayed, e.g., asdescribed below.

A. Sharing Rules for Feeds

As mentioned above, a user may not be allowed to see all of the recordsin the database, and not even all of the records of the organization towhich the user belongs. A user can also be restricted from viewingcertain fields of a record that the user is otherwise authorized toview. Accordingly, certain implementations use access rules (also calledsharing rules and field-level security FLS) to ensure that a user doesnot view a feed tracked update or message that the user is notauthorized to see. A feed of a record can be subject to the same accessrules as the parent record.

In one implementation, access rules can be used to prevent subscriptionto a record that the user cannot see. In one implementation, a user cansee a record, but only some of the fields. In such instances, only itemsabout fields that the user can access may be displayed. In anotherimplementation, sharing rules and FLS are applied before a feed item isbeing added to a feed. In another implementation, sharing rules and FLSare applied after a feed item has been added and when the feed is beingdisplayed. When a restriction of display is mentioned, the enforcementof access rules may occur at any stage before display.

In some implementations, the access rules can be enforced when a queryis provided to a record or a user's profile to obtain feed items for anews feed of a user. The access rules can be checked andcross-references with the feed items that are in the feed. Then, thequery can only return feed items for which the user has access.

In other implementations, the access rules can be enforced when a userselects a specific profile feed or record feed. For example, when a userarrives on a home page (or selects a tab to see the record feed), thedatabase system can check to see which feed items the user can see. Insuch an implementation, each feed item can be associated with metadatathat identifies which field the feed item is about. Thus, in oneimplementation, a feed tracked update is not visible unless theassociated record and/or field are visible to the user.

In one example, when a user accesses a feed of a record, an access checkcan be performed to identify whether the user can access the object typeof the record. In one implementation, users are assigned a profile type,and the profile type is cross-referenced (e.g., by checking a table) todetermine whether the profile type of the user can see the object typeof the record.

In some implementations, access to specific records can be checked,e.g., after it has been determined that the user can access the recordtype. Rules can be used to determine the records viewable by a user.Such rules can determine the viewable records as a combination of thoseviewable by profile type, viewable due to a profile hierarchy (e.g., aboss can view records of profile types lower in the hierarchy), andviewable by manual sharing (e.g., as may be done by an owner of arecord). In one implementation, the records viewable by a user can bedetermined beforehand and stored in a table. In one implementation, thetable can be cross-referenced by user (or profile type of a user) toprovide a list of the records that the user can see, and the list can besearched to determine if the record at issue is among the list. Inanother implementation, the table can be cross-referenced by record todetermine a list of the profile types that can access the record, andthe list can be searched to find out if the requesting user is in thelist. In another implementation, the records viewable by a user can bedetermined dynamically at the time of the access check, e.g., byapplying rules to data (such as user profile and hierarchy information)obtained from querying one or more tables.

In other implementations, checks can be made as to whether a user hasaccess to certain fields of a record, e.g., after it has been determinedthat the user can access the record. In one aspect, the access check onfields can be performed on results already obtained from the database,to filter out fields that the user cannot see. In one implementation,the fields associated with retrieved feed items are determined, andthese fields are cross-referenced with an access table that contains thefields accessible by the user (e.g., using the profile type of theuser). Such an access table could also be a negative access table byspecifying fields that the user cannot see, as can other access tablesmentioned herein. In one implementation, the field level access table isstored in cache at a server.

In one implementation, a user can see the same fields across all recordsof a certain type (e.g., as long as the user can see the record). In oneimplementation, there is a field level access table for each objecttype. The access table can be cross-referenced by user (e.g., viaprofile type) or field. For example, a field can be identified alongwith the profile types that can see the field, and it can be determinedwhether the user's profile type is listed. In another example, the usercan be found and the fields to which the user has access can beobtained. In another implementation, the accessible fields could bespecified for each record.

Regarding profile feeds and news feeds, a first user may perform anaction on a record, and a feed tracked update may be generated and addedto the first user's profile feed. A second user who is allowed to followthe first user may not have access rights to the record. Thus, the feedtracked update can be excluded from a news feed of the second user, orwhen the second user views the first user's profile feed directly. Inone implementation, if a user is already on the detail page, thenanother access check (at least at the record level) may optionally notbe performed since a check was already done in order to view the detailpage.

In some implementations, for profile feeds and news feeds, the feeditems can be organized by object type. IT can then be determined whetherthe requesting user can access to those object types. Other accesschecks can be done independently or in conjunction with these accesschecks, as is described above.

B. API Implementation

Various implementations can implement the access rules in various ways.In one implementation, all recent feed items (or more generally events)are retrieved from a feed that is ready for display (e.g., after a feedgenerator performs formatting) or a table. Then, bulk sharing checks canbe applied on the retrieved items. The viewable feed items of the mostrecent set can then be displayed.

In another implementation regarding a profile feed, for non-VAD (viewall data) users, i.e. users who can see everything, certain functionscan be overridden. In one implementation, a FROM clause in a query canbe overridden to be a pipelined function, e.g., with different parts ofthe query being operated on at the same time, but with differentoperations of a pipeline. This pipeline function can be given a rowlimit and the maximum number of sharing checks to run. It can loop,selecting the next batch of rows, run sharing checks against them inbulk, and pipe back any IDs which are accessible. In one aspect, innearly all cases, the user feed can contain accessible IDs so thesharing checks can pass on the first loop. However, it is possible thesharing may have changed such that this user's access is greatlyreduced. In one worst case, implementations can run sharing checks on upto the maximum number of sharing check rows (e.g., a default 500) andthen terminate the function with the IDs which passed so far, possiblyzero. Such an example includes a low level person viewing profile feedof CEO.

In some implementations, if the user has a small number of subscriptions(e.g., <25), then implementations can first run sharing checks on thoseIDs and then drive the main query from those accessible IDs, as opposedto a semi-join against the subscription and running sharing checks onthe resulting rows. In other implementations, FLS is enforced bybuilding up a TABLE CAST of the accessible field IDs from the cachedvalues. A main query can then join against this table to filter onlyaccessible fields.

XI. Filtering and Searching Feeds

It can be possible that a user subscribes to many users and records,which can cause a user's news feed to be very long and include many feeditems. In such instances, it can be difficult for the user to read everyfeed item, and thus some important or interesting feed items may not beread. In some implementations, filters may be used to determine whichfeed items are added to a feed or displayed in the feed, even though auser may be authorized to see more than what is displayed. Section VII.Ealso provides a description of filtering based on criteria.

In one implementation, an “interestingness” filter can function as amodule for controlling/recommending which feed tracked updates make itto the news feed when the number of items that a user subscribes to islarge. In one such implementation, a user can specify a filter, which isapplied to a user's news feed or to record and profile feeds that theuser requests. Different filters can be used for each. For example,processing can be done on the news feed to figure out which feed trackedupdates are the most relevant to the user. One implementation can use animportance weight and level/ranking, as described herein. Otherimplementations can include a user specifying keywords for a message andspecifying which records or users are most important.

In one implementation, a filter can be used that only allows certainfeed items to be added to a feed and/or to be displayed as part of afeed. A filter can be used such that the removal or non-addition ofcertain feed items automatically occur for any new feed items after thefilter criteria are entered. The filter criteria can also be addedretroactively. The criteria of such a filter can be applied via a querymechanism as part of adding a feed item to a table or displaying a feed,as described in sections above. In various implementations, a user candirectly write a query or create the query through a graphical userinterface.

FIG. 14 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1400 for creating acustom feed for users of a database system using filtering criteria,performed in accordance with some implementations. Any of the followingblocks can be performed wholly or partially with the database system,and in particular by one or more processor of the database system.

In block 1410, one or more criteria specifying which feed items are tobe displayed to a first user are received from a tenant. In oneimplementation, the criteria specifies which items to add to the customfeed. For example, the criteria could specify to only include feed itemsfor certain fields of a record, messages including certain keywords, andother criteria mentioned herein. In another implementation, the criteriaspecifies which items to remove from the custom feed. For example, thecriteria could specify not to include feed items about certain fields orincluding certain keywords.

In block 1420, the database system identifies feed items of one or moreselected objects that match the criteria. The feed items can be storedin the database, e.g., in one or more of the tables of FIG. 9A. In oneimplementation, the one or more selected objects are the objects thatthe first user is following. In another implementation, the one or moreselected objects is a single record whose record feed the first user isrequesting.

In block 1430, the feed items that match the criteria are displayed tothe first user in the custom feed. The generation of text for a feedtracked update can occur after the identification of the feed items(e.g., data for a field change) and before the display of the finalversion of the feed item.

In one implementation, the criteria are received before a feed item iscreated. In another implementation, the criteria are received from thefirst user. In one aspect, the criteria may only used for determiningfeeds to display to the first user. In yet another implementation, thecriteria are received from a first tenant and applies to all of theusers of the first tenant. Also, in an implementation where a pluralityof criteria are specified, the criteria may be satisfied for a feed itemif one criterion is satisfied.

Some implementations can provide mechanisms to search for feed items ofinterest. For example, the feed items can be searched by keyword, e.g.,as entered by a user. As another example, a tab (or other selectiondevice) can show feed items about or from a particular user. In oneimplementation, only messages (or even just comments) from a particularuser can be selected.

In another implementation, a user can enter search criteria so that thefeed items currently displayed are searched and a new list of matchingfeed items is displayed. A search box can be used to enter keywords.Picklists, menus, or other mechanisms can be used to select searchcriteria. In yet another implementation, feed comments are text-indexedand searchable. Feed comments accessibility and visibility can apply onthe search operation too.

In one implementation, when a user performs a search of feeds, there canbe an implicit filter of the user (e.g., by user ID). This can restrictthe search to only the news feed of the user, and thus to only recordfeeds and profile feeds that the user is subscribed. In anotherimplementation, searches can also be done across feeds of users andrecords that are not being subscribed.

Besides searching for feed items that match a criteria, one also couldsearch for a particular feed item. However, in one implementation, auser cannot directly query a feed item or feed comment. In such animplementation, a user can query to obtain a particular profile orrecord feed, and then navigate to the feed item (e.g., as child of theparent feed). In another implementation, the relationship from a feed toits parent entity (e.g., a record or user profile) is uni-directional.That is a user can navigate from the feed to the parent but not viceversa.

In one implementation, a user can directly query the child tables, e.g.,comment table 930. Thus, a user could search for comments only that userhas made, or comments that contain certain words. In anotherimplementation, a user can search for a profile feed of only one user.In yet another implementation, a user can search for profile feeds ofmultiple users (e.g., by specifying multiple user names or IDs), whichcan be combined into a single feed.

XII. Maintaining Records for Follower's Feeds

If every feed item is stored and maintained on a follower's feed or evenin the profile and/or record feeds, the amount of data to be storedcould be massive, enough to cause storage issues in the system. In oneimplementation, the N (e.g., 50) most recent feed items for each feedare kept. However, there can be a need to keep certain older feed items.Thus, implementations can remove certain feed items, while keepingothers. In other implementations, old feed tracked updates may bearchived in a data store separate from where recent feed items arestored.

In some implementations, feeds are purged by a routine (also called areaper) that can remove items deemed not worthy to keep (e.g., olditems). Any underlying data structures from which feed items are createdcan also be purged. In one implementation, the reaper can remove certainitems when new items are added (e.g., after every 5th item added). Asanother example, feed items may be deleted synchronously during the saveoperation itself. However, this may slow down each save operation. Inone implementation, however, this may be better than incurring a largercost when the items are removed at longer intervals. In anotherimplementation, the reaper can run periodically as a batch process. Suchroutines can ensure that a table size does not become too large. In oneaspect, a reaper routine can keep the event hifeed tracked update tablerelatively small so the sharing checks are not extremely expensive.

In various implementations, the reaper can maintain a minimum number(e.g., 50 or 100) of feed items per record, maintain a minimum number ofrecords per user (e.g., per user ID), and not deleting feed items (orentire records), which have comments against it. Such implementationscan ensure that the detail page and profile page have sufficient data todisplay in a feed. Note that the sharing checks for feed queries can cutdown the number of records further for users with less access. Thus, thenumber of records finally displayed for specific users can besignificantly less than a minimum number for a specific profile orrecord feed. In one implementation, a reaper deletes data that is olderthan a specified time (e.g., 6 months or a year).

In one implementation, the reaper can perform the deletion of feed items(purging) as a batch up deletion. This can avoid deletion of largenumber of records that may lead to locking issues. In anotherimplementation, the reaper can be run often so that the table does notbecome difficult to manage (e.g., size-wise). In this way the reaper canwork on a limited set of records. In one implementation, the reaper mayhave logic that deletes certain items (e.g., by an identification) fromtables (e.g., those in FIG. 9A), or sections of the tables.

XIII. Sharing Data of an Information Feed of an Online Social Network

FIG. 15 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1500 for sharingdata of an information feed, performed in accordance with someimplementations. The data can be included in one or more feed itemscapable of being stored in tables of a database system, as describedabove with reference to FIG. 9A, and capable of being displayed in apresentation on a display device, as described above with reference toFIGS. 7 and 8 and further described below. In some instances, the datato be shared is a portion of the data of one or more feed items of theinformation feed.

In FIG. 15, data of any feed item of the information feed can be shared.This includes data from any of the various types of feed items describedherein. The data can be in the form of message content, for instance, inthe case of a post or a comment, where a user has entered somecharacter-based text and/or symbols, and other information updates asdescribed above. The data to be shared in method 1500 can also be in theform of an electronic file, such as a Microsoft Word® document, aPowerpoint® document, a PDF file, an image file, an audio file, and/or amultimedia file, by way of example. Often, such files are stored in thedatabase system in association with the particular feed, such as a groupfeed, with icons representing the files presented in a files region of auser interface in which the information feed is displayed. In someinstances, such files can be attached to or otherwise accessed throughfeed items in the information feed. In other instances, the data to beshared includes one or more links, such as hyperlinks to web pages atvarious URL addresses or hyperlinks to data objects stored in a databasesystem. The data to be shared can include portions of information updatecontent, files, links, and combinations thereof. In someimplementations, the data to be shared can be a graphical representationof such content, files, links, etc.

FIG. 18 shows an image of an example of a feed item 1800 as presented inan information feed of a graphical user interface (GUI) on a displaydevice, according to some implementations. For instance, the displaydevice can be a display of a user system 12, with a web browser programoperating on user system 12 to output a graphical presentation of theinformation feed. In this example, the feed item data includes a post1804 and comments 1808 and 1812 submitted in response to post 1804. Thepost 1804 and comments 1808 and 1812 each include textual data in theform of questions and statements. In addition, post 1804 includes anattached file, “ADM_Sprint_Review_Chatter Reach_June_2011”, which a usercan select, for instance, by clicking on the title of the file asdisplayed in post 1804 using a mouse, for example, to open and view. Inthis example, a user, Ron Kimble, has submitted post 1804 to requestthat other users review the attached file and respond to particularquestions posed in post 1804. Other users such as John Kucera and JariKoister have used a comment publisher 1816 to submit comments 1808 and1812 in response to Ron Kimble's post 1804. Returning to FIG. 15, inperforming method 1500, part of all of the data in one or more of post1804 and comments 1808 and 1812 can be shared, as described in greaterdetail below.

In FIG. 15, block 1504, a selection of at least a portion of one or moreof the feed items, such as feed item 1800 of FIG. 18, is received by oneor more servers performing method 1500. In particular, part or all ofthe data of one or more feed items can be selected. Thus, for example,returning to FIG. 18, in some instances, the file attached to post 1804or a graphical representation such as an icon or title of the file canbe selected, excluding the content of post 1804 and excluding thecontent of comments 1808 and 1812. In other instances, only the textualcontent of post 1804, e.g., “Draft of sprint deck. Please review andcomment . . . ” and the textual content of one or more of comments 1808and 1812 is selected in block 1504 of method 1500.

In block 1504, the selection of information feed data can be automatedor user-generated. For instance, the identification of certain keywordsin the data and/or attachments of a message in a feed item can cause themessage to be selected, as soon as the message is submitted by a user.In another example, a user can use an input device such as a mouse toclick on or drag a graphical box around data to be selected, whenviewing the information feed in a GUI, or use other mechanisms such aspick lists or menu-driven toolbars to select certain data of one or morefeed items.

In one example of method 1500, an app server 288 in the on-demandservice environment 200 of FIGS. 2A and 2B can receive the selection ofblock 1504 from a user operating a user system 12 as shown in FIGS. 1Aand 1B. In other instances, the selection is received from a proxy onbehalf of another user or information source. Any of the serversdescribed above with reference to FIG. 2B or other computing devicesdescribed herein can be configured to receive selections and otherwiseperform operations in accordance with method 1500. In block 1504, anysuch selections received by one or more computing devices performingmethod 1500 can be received as signals over network 14 of FIGS. 1A and1B, transmitted from one of the user systems 12.

In FIG. 15, in block 1508, when certain information feed data isselected, one or more network communications including the selecteddata, as further explained below, can be generated. Such networkcommunications of block 1508 can have various formats and be configuredto be delivered over various data networks and other types ofcommunications networks, as further explained below. In block 1512, anygenerated network communications of block 1508 can be sent to one ormore designated network addresses via a suitable network or combinationof networks. By way of example, such networks can include data networkssuch as the Internet, one or more Intranets, telecommunications networksincluding cellular and other mobile communications networks, andcombinations thereof.

FIG. 16 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1600 for sharingdata of an information feed, performed in accordance with someimplementations. In block 1604, a selection of information feed data,such as part or all of the data of one or more feed items, is received,as described above with reference to block 1504 of FIG. 15. Variouscontent and attachments presented as feed items in the information feedcan be selected and can include various types of information updates asdescribed above. Any files or links to records presented as one or morefeed items in the information feed can be selected, and portions of suchdata objects can be selected, depending on the particular application.In some instances, one or more messages defining part or all of aconversation can be selected. For example, returning to the example ofFIG. 18, post 1804 and comments 1808 and 1812 can form at least part ofa conversation and be selected as such in block 1604. In some otherinstances, record updates in an information feed can be selected as wellas other state representations of the records, for instance, indicatinga change or creation of a field in the record. In another example, theselected data in block 1604 is a graphical representation in the form ofa rendering of at least a portion of one or more feed items. Forinstance, a “preview” of an uploaded Powerpoint® document, for example,showing a thumbnail image of the first page of the document, can bedisplayed as at least a part of a feed item. Part or all of thisgraphical rendering can be selected in block 1604. Also, an attached oruploaded zip file presented or otherwise identified in a feed item of aninformation feed can be selected, or simply the name of the zip file canbe selected. In another example, the selected data can be in the form ofa post or comment describing a record, and a file including one or morerecord updates to the record can be attached to provide a staterepresentation of the record.

In some implementations, the GUI in which the information feed ispresented may include a selection mechanism in the form of a button,drop down arrow, checkbox, pick list, etc. that a user can select toidentify feed item data to be shared. Other various interface componentscan be provided to receive such identifications from a user to initiatean action or command to generate and send network communicationsincluding the selected data to other users. Thus, for example,information feed data can be delivered to other users who may or may nothave access to the online social network in which the information feedis provided. Returning to FIG. 18, by way of example only, an image ofthe graphical presentation of feed item 1800 can be generated, forinstance, as a “snapshot” of the feed item 1800 as visually presented inthe GUI, including the original post 1804, any comments 1808 and 1812submitted in response to the post, an indication of a number of “likes”and/or a list of users who have “liked” the post, and any other messagesor information updates submitted in response to post 1804, as presentedin the GUI.

In some examples, to select information feed data, generate anappropriate network communication, and send the generated networkcommunication to one or more network addresses, tools can be provided ina suitable GUI to allow a user to efficiently execute such operations.In some implementations, as described in greater detail with respect tothe examples below, a user can use a pointing device such a mouse tohover over one or more feed items or a portion of such feed items aspresented in a GUI, select a portion of the displayed data, request togenerate a network communication including the selected data, enter anyfurther details, which the user may wish to include with thecommunication, and send the communication.

FIG. 19 shows an example of the feed item 1800 with an indicator and amenu appearing when hovering over the indicator using a pointing deviceas presented in an information feed of a GUI on a display device,according to some implementations. As shown in FIG. 19, a user can usean input pointing device in the form of a mouse, finger on a touchscreen display, etc., to hover a pointer over feed item 1800 orinformation update within the feed item 1800 such as post 1804 of FIGS.18 and 19, as presented in the GUI. When doing so, an indicator in theform of arrow 1904 appears in the user interface. In this example, arrow1904 can also appear when the pointer is in or approaching the generalvicinity of a region of the GUI in which post 1804 or other messages infeed item 1800 are displayed. When the user clicks on arrow 1904, a menu1908 appears. In some instances, menu 1908 appears by the pointingdevice hovering over arrow 1904 for some designated amount of time,without the user having to click on arrow 1904. The menu 1908 can havevarious formats, for instance, including a pick list of selections ofactions to take with respect to the selected post 1804 and/or other datain feed item 1800. In another implementation of menu 1908, multiple tabscan be presented, with selections of various actions to perform withrespect to the feed item or selected portion of the feed item. In thisexample, menu 1908 includes a selectable command 1912 to email the post1804 that the user hovered the pointer over and selected as describedabove. Portions of data of individual feed items can be selected in thismanner, as can combinations of messages and combinations of feed itemspresented in an information feed. For example, in anotherimplementation, a user can operate a mouse to click and drag a boxaround data of interest. When the user releases the mouse button, thearrow 1904 appears, and the user can then choose to email the selectedfeed data using a suitable menu 1908.

In FIG. 19, selecting the “email feed post” command 1912, in thisexample, will take the user to an additional GUI providing the user withthe option to enter any additional information including customizeddetails about the selected information feed data or other information toconvey to the intended recipient of such data before sending theselected feed data to the recipient, as further explained below.

FIG. 20 shows an image of an example of an overlay window 2000 forentering details about selected information feed data as presented in aGUI on a display device, according to some implementations. Forinstance, when a user clicks on the “email feed post” selection 1912 ofFIG. 19, overlay window 2000 or a similarly configured pop-up window canbe generated and displayed on a display of a user system 12. The usercan then use overlay window 2000 to make selections and enter data toprovide additional details about the selected feed data, for instance,to include as part of an email with the selected feed data to adesignated recipient. In this example, overlay window 2000 includes “To”field 2004, in which the user can enter or otherwise select one or moreemail addresses of recipient(s).

In this example, overlay window 2000 further includes an “Attachment”field 2008 referring to the file attached to Ron Kimble's post 1804 ofFIGS. 18 and 19. Thus, in this example, the selected information feeddata of block 1604 includes the attached file of post 1804 but excludesthe other content including Ron Kimble's statements in post 1804. Inother examples, the entire post 1804 is selected in addition to one ormore of the comments 1808 and 1812. In Attachment field 2008, in someimplementations, a pick list or other menu of selectable informationfeed data can be provided for a user to determine the appropriate datato send to the recipient. For example, one or more feed items can becategorized by author, subject matter, and/or attached files, and theuser can select one or more of the identified feed items or portionsthereof to share. In another example, the user can click on the word“Attachment” to open a search window, in which the user can enter one ormore keywords to search and identify feed items to send. For instance,keyword searching can be performed on various fields of the feed itemsincluding author, date, time, followers, content, and names ofattachments in the various feed items. The user can then select feeditems of interest to attach in field 2008.

In FIG. 20, in “Message” field 2012, the user can enter commentaryincluding appropriate content to describe the details of the selectedinformation feed data and any other commentary as may be appropriate toexplain the context of the selected feed data. In this example, messagefield 2012 includes a text box 2014 in which the user can entercustomized statements and questions. In email invitation field 2018, auser can click on a hyperlink to interface with an email serviceaccessible by the user system 12, for instance, Microsoft Outlook®, togenerate a personalized email as one form of network communication asdescribed above. Using an appropriate API, the content of Message field2012, any attachments indicated in field 2008, and the To field 2004contents can be transferred to appropriate fields of an email of apersonalized email, using field 2018. As an alternative to interfacingwith a separate email service using field 2018, when using overlaywindow 2000 to share feed data, after the appropriate content is enteredor otherwise selected in fields 2004-2014, the user can click on a sendbutton 2022 to send the selected feed data and accompanying informationentered in overlay window 2000 as any of various forms of networkcommunications to the recipient(s) identified in To field 2004.

In some implementations, the information feed is an API-accessibleobject or collection of objects. Thus, the feed items of the informationfeed, including any attached files, are also API-accessible. Using anoverlay window 2000 or other appropriate interface, various objectsrelated to selected feed items can also be included in the selected datato share with designated recipients. For instance, when a particularpost or comment of the information feed has been selected, any relatedmessages and other information updates such as comments, likes/dislikes,and other posts having the same keywords or other references to theselected post can automatically be selected and included in a networkcommunication to share with various recipients. In addition, in someimplementations, data objects not included in the information feed butotherwise linked with or identified by one or more feed items, such asrecords mentioned in posts or state representations of those records,can automatically be included in the network communication. In someimplementations, the network communication also includes any filesreferred to in a message of the information feed, such as one or moregroup files identified on a group page. For instance, a group feed mayinclude various posts referring to particular group files. Thus, variousdata related to one or more feed items or selected portions of feeditems can be included in the bundle. In FIG. 20, in someimplementations, overlay window 2000 provides additional fields toinclude other information in the bundled network communication. This caninclude the addition of one or more hyperlinks with the networkcommunication, for instance, linking to a web page or a record stored ina database system, so the recipient of the network communication canclick on the hyperlink to access such data.

Returning to FIG. 16, in block 1608, a first network communicationincluding the data selected in block 1604 is generated. While theexample described above with respect to FIG. 20 refers to emailingselected data, other types of network communications can be used. Forinstance, the network communication generated in block 1608 can be inthe form of an instant message (“IM”), a text message, a publishing ofdata on a web page, and other various network communications in additionto email. The first network communication generated in block 1608 caninclude various components of information in addition to selected feeditem data, as described above with reference to FIGS. 18-20. Thus, userinput data in the form of customized content entered in field 2014 ofoverlay window 2000 can be included.

In FIG. 20, when the user selects the “email invitation” button 2018, anemail communication window can be generated by sending a signal to theappropriate email service. When the data of overlay window 2000 istransferred into an appropriate format of the email service, the usercan then edit the email communication to provide additional details anduse additional features provided by the email service.

FIG. 21 shows an image of an example of an email communication window2100 of an email service for sending selected information feed data, aspresented in a GUI on a display device, according to someimplementations. In this example, returning to FIG. 18, feed item 1800has been incorporated into the body 2104 of email communication window2100. Here, a screen shot or graphical representation 2108 of feed item1800 is what is included in email communication window 2100. Thegraphical representation 2108 captures the appearance of feed item 1800as presented on a display device. Thus, in some examples, the recipientof the email is able to see a comment publisher field 2112 but isprevented from entering comments and submitting such comments forinclusion in the information feed. Similarly, the recipient of the emailcommunication in this example is not able to submit personal preferencessuch as likes/dislikes or otherwise comment on posts or comments in therepresentation 2108 of feed item 1800.

The email communication window 2100 provides a preview of the emailreceived by the designated recipient that can be edited to includeadditional details, such as commentary 2116. Additional selections ofthe email service can be provided in a toolbar 2120, such as replybutton 2120 a, forward button 2120 b, delete button 2120 c, move tofolder button 2120 d, categorize button 2120 e, and follow up button2120 f, as will be understood by those skilled in the art.

Returning to FIG. 16, in block 1612, the email or other type of networkcommunication generated in block 1608 is sent to a designated networkaddress via an appropriate network or combination of networks. Forinstance, in the examples of FIGS. 20 and 21, the designated networkaddress can be an email address. As mentioned above, more than one suchnetwork address can be included, such as multiple email addresses in theTo field 2004 of FIG. 20. In other examples, one or more networkaddresses designated in block 1612 can include an IM address, a phonenumber, for instance, when the network communication is in the form of atext message, a URL address, for instance, when the networkcommunication is in the form of data to be provided to web page, andother various identifications of locations on communications networks.

In some implementations, the network address or addresses specified inblock 1612, for instance, using the overlay window 2000 of FIG. 20, areassociated with an online social network of which the user is anauthorized user or otherwise has access. In some implementations, thenetwork address designated in block 1612 is not associated with such anonline social network. Thus, any of various network addresses outside ofa particular social network can be specified so data can be shared byone or more authorized users of the social network with any externalentities. The same principle is applicable to organizations. That is,the user operating a user system 12 to access and share feed data usingthe techniques described herein can communicate such data to variousrecipients outside of the particular organization or organizations towhich the user belongs. In some instances, an online social network isspecific to the particular organization of which the user is a member.Thus, using the techniques described herein, users can share socialnetwork data, for instance, as presented in an information feed, withvarious recipients who are not authorized users of the particularorganization and/or social network of the sender. Thus, a recipient ofthe network communication of block 1612 can be a person who does nothave a user profile or otherwise have access to an implementation ofChatter® in a particular organization.

In FIG. 16, when a recipient at the designated network address of block1612 receives the first network communication, in some implementations,the recipient has the ability to generate and send an appropriateresponse, or second network communication, to the sender. For instance,when the first network communication is an email, the recipient canselect a reply button in the recipient's email service to generate aresponse email to send back to the sender's email address. When such asecond network communication is received in block 1616, one or moreservers performing method 1600 are configured to determine whether thereceived second network communication is authorized to be included inthe information feed, in block 1620. The authorization determination inblock 1620 is described in greater detail below with respect to FIG. 17.When the second network communication is not authorized, the method 1600terminates in block 1624. Returning to block 1620, when it is determinedthat the second network communication is authorized, the informationfeed from which the data was selected and sent to the recipient in block1612 can be updated to include part or all of the data of the secondnetwork communication. For instance, the content of a reply from therecipient can be included as a comment in response to a shared post orpresented in the information feed as a new post. In other examples, whenthe second network communication is authorized, the information feed isupdated to include various other types of data referenced by, includedin, or attached to the second network communication, including variousmessages, record updates, and other information updates as describedabove. Such information updates can be incorporated into existing feeditems of the information feed or presented as new feed items.

FIG. 17 shows a flowchart of an example of a method 1700 for determiningwhether a received network communication is authorized, performed inaccordance with some implementations. For example, one or more of theblocks of method 1700 can be performed in block 1620 of FIG. 16 todetermine whether the second network communication is authorized.

In FIG. 17, in block 1704, the one or more servers performing method1700 are configured to determine whether the received networkcommunication is sent from or otherwise identifies the designatednetwork address, for instance, the network address of the designatedrecipient(s) of the first network communication in block 1612. Forexample, email addresses or phone numbers can be compared. In someimplementations, a post sent to a recipient in block 1612 of FIG. 16 canbe marked as having been sent to an identifiable email address. That is,the server can temporarily store the email address in memory when theemail is sent. This email address can be designated for a limited timeperiod as an authorized email address from which to receive furthercommunications. Thus, for instance, comments can be received from thedesignated recipient and included in the information feed with the postthat was shared in block 1612. When displayed in the feed, the commentcan be labeled as having been sent from the email address of thedesignated recipient or entity associated with that email address.

Another determination that can be performed, independently or inaddition to block 1704, is whether the received network communicationidentifies the first network communication, in block 1708. For instance,if the received network communication is an email submitted in directreply to the first network communication of block 1612 of FIG. 16, thereceived email can be considered of substantive importance and thus beauthorized for inclusion in the information feed. In someimplementations, a feed item such as a post in an information feed has aspecific feed ID. This feed ID can be included with the post in thefirst network communication. The first network communication can beconfigured to cause any replies to include the feed ID, thus indicatingthat the replies are authorized to be attached to the post and presentedin the information feed.

Other determinations that can be performed, independently or in additionto blocks 1704 and 1708, include a determination of whether the authoror sender of the received network communication is authorized, in block1712. For instance, the sender's email address can be compared with alist of authorized participants in the information feed. Such authorizedparticipants can include entities that may or may not be members of theparticular social network and/or organization of the information feed,as mentioned above. Thus, a recipient of a first network communicationwho is an authorized user of an organization's online social network,but who doesn't have access to the social network at the time of reply,can reply to a feed item by sending an email, which will be posted tothe information feed as an information update. For instance, the emailcan include a comment, “I'm at Wal-Mart . . . ,” which can beincorporated in a feed item with a post shared with the recipient inblock 1612 of FIG. 16. In some implementations, one or more entities canbe blocked, using the same principle. For instance, by using the list ofauthorized participants, any entities not explicitly identified on thelist can be prevented from responding to and submitting data to beincorporated into the information feed. If certain entities areoriginally on the list, inappropriate spamming or other objectionableactivity on their part can result in a determination to remove them fromthe list.

In FIG. 17, if one or more of the determinations of blocks 1704-1712 orother similar factors is positive, then method 1700 proceeds to block1716, in which the received network communication is authorized.Otherwise, the method terminates in block 1720.

The specific details of the specific aspects of implementationsdisclosed herein may be combined in any suitable manner withoutdeparting from the spirit and scope of the disclosed implementations.However, other implementations may be directed to specificimplementations relating to each individual aspect, or specificcombinations of these individual aspects.

While the disclosed examples are often described herein with referenceto an implementation in which an on-demand enterprise servicesenvironment is implemented in a system having an application serverproviding a front end for an on-demand database service capable ofsupporting multiple tenants, the present invention is not limited tomulti-tenant databases nor deployment on application servers.Implementations may be practiced using other database architectures,i.e., ORACLE®, DB2® by IBM and the like without departing from the scopeof the implementations claimed.

It should be understood that some of the disclosed implementations canbe embodied in the form of control logic using hardware and/or usingcomputer software in a modular or integrated manner. Other ways and/ormethods are possible using hardware and a combination of hardware andsoftware.

Any of the software components or functions described in thisapplication may be implemented as software code to be executed by aprocessor using any suitable computer language such as, for example,Java, C++ or Perl using, for example, conventional or object-orientedtechniques. The software code may be stored as a series of instructionsor commands on a computer-readable medium for storage and/ortransmission, suitable media include random access memory (RAM), a readonly memory (ROM), a magnetic medium such as a hard-drive or a floppydisk, or an optical medium such as a compact disk (CD) or DVD (digitalversatile disk), flash memory, and the like. The computer-readablemedium may be any combination of such storage or transmission devices.Computer-readable media encoded with the software/program code may bepackaged with a compatible device or provided separately from otherdevices (e.g., via Internet download). Any such computer-readable mediummay reside on or within a single computer program product (e.g., a harddrive or an entire computer system), and may be present on or withindifferent computer program products within a system or network. Acomputer system, or other computing device, may include a monitor,printer, or other suitable display for providing any of the resultsmentioned herein to a user.

While various implementations have been described herein, it should beunderstood that they have been presented by way of example only, and notlimitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present applicationshould not be limited by any of the implementations described herein,but should be defined only in accordance with the following andlater-submitted claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for sharing social network messagesusing a social networking system, the system comprising: a databasesystem implemented using a server system comprising one or more hardwareprocessors, the database system configurable to cause: processing arequest received from a user device of a first user of the socialnetworking system, the first user being connected with a first networkof users of the social networking system; generating, using a databaseand based on the request, a first social network message to be includedin a conversation between the first user and a future or existingparticipant in the conversation, the participant being external to thefirst network of users, the conversation being electronic and comprisinga plurality of social network messages accessible via the socialnetworking system and configured to be displayed in a user interface ona display of the user device, the user interface configured to permitsubmission of a reply to a social network message of the conversation;generating a network communication comprising content of the firstmessage, the network communication being in a format other than aconversation format of the conversation; sending the generated networkcommunication to a network address of the participant, the generatednetwork communication configured to be sent, at least partly, through acommunications network external to the professional social networkingsystem; processing a response network communication received from thenetwork address, the response network communication being in response tothe generated network communication; generating, using the database, asecond social network message to be included in the conversation, thesecond message comprising content of the response network communication;and displaying, in the user interface on the display of the user device,at least a portion of the second message in association with anidentification of the participant.
 2. The system of claim 1, thedatabase system further configurable to cause: determining that acontact associated with the first user is not a member of the socialnetworking system.
 3. The database system of claim 2, the databasesystem further configurable to cause: generating, responsive todetermining that the contact associated with the first user is not amember of the social networking system, a further network communicationcomprising an invitation to join the social networking system.
 4. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the participant is included in a list ofparticipants authorized to participate in the conversation.
 5. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the social networking system is LinkedIn®. 6.The system of claim 1, wherein the generated network communicationcomprises a selectable link operable to allow the participant to blockthe first user from sending further network communications to theparticipant.
 7. The system of claim 1, wherein the network communicationcomprises an identifier of a professional organization associated withthe first user and/or the participant.
 8. A computer program product forsharing social network messages using a social networking system, thecomputer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readablemedium storing computer-readable program code to be executed by one ormore processors when retrieved from the non-transitory computer-readablemedium, the program code comprising instructions configurable to cause:processing a request received from a user device of a first user of thesocial networking system, the first user being connected with a firstnetwork of users of the social networking system; generating, using adatabase and based on the request, a first social network message to beincluded in a conversation between the first user and a future orexisting participant in the conversation, the participant being externalto the first network of users, the conversation being electronic andcomprising plurality of social network messages accessible via thesocial networking system and configured to be displayed in a userinterface on a display of the user device, the user interface configuredto permit submission of a reply to a social network message of theconversation; generating a network communication comprising content ofthe first message, the network communication being in a format otherthan a conversation format of the conversation; sending the generatednetwork communication to a network address of the participant, thegenerated network communication configured to be sent, at least partly,through a communications network external to the social networkingsystem; processing a response network communication received from thenetwork address, the response network communication being in response tothe generated network communication; generating, using the database, asecond social network message to be included in the conversation, thesecond message comprising content of the response network communication;and displaying, in the user interface on the display of the user device,at least a portion of the second message in association with anidentification of the participant.
 9. The computer program product ofclaim 8, the instructions further configurable to cause: determiningthat a contact associated with the first user is not a member of thesocial networking system.
 10. The computer program product of claim 9,the instructions further configurable to cause: generating, responsiveto determining that the contact associated with the first user is not amember of the social networking system, a further network communicationcomprising an invitation to join the social networking system.
 11. Thecomputer program product of claim 8, wherein the participant is includedin a list of participants authorized to participate in the conversation.12. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the socialnetworking system is LinkedIn®.
 13. The computer program product ofclaim 8, wherein the generated network communication comprises aselectable link operable to allow the participant to block the firstuser from sending further network communications to the participant. 14.The database system of claim 1, wherein the network communicationcomprises an identifier of a professional organization associated withthe first user and/or the participant.
 15. A method for sharing socialnetwork messages using a social networking system, the methodcomprising: processing a request received from a user device of a firstuser of the social networking system, the first user being connectedwith a first network of users of the social networking system;generating, using a database and based on the request, a first socialnetwork message to be included in a conversation between the first userand a future or existing participant in the conversation, theparticipant being external to the first network of users, theconversation being electronic and comprising a plurality of socialnetwork messages accessible via the social networking system andconfigured to be displayed in a user interface on a display of the userdevice, the user interface configured to permit submission of a reply toa social network message of the conversation; generating a networkcommunication comprising content of the first message, the networkcommunication being in a format other than a conversation format of theconversation; sending the generated network communication to a networkaddress of the participant, the generated network communicationconfigured to be sent, at least partly, through a communications networkexternal to the social networking system; processing a response networkcommunication received from the network address, the response networkcommunication being in response to the generated network communication;generating, using the database, a second social network message to beincluded in the conversation, the second message comprising content ofthe response network communication; and displaying, in the userinterface on the display of the user device, at least a portion of thesecond message in association with an identification of the participant.16. The method of claim 15, the method further comprising: determiningthat a contact associated with the first user is not a member of thesocial networking system.
 17. The method of claim 16, the method furthercomprising: generating, responsive to determining that the contactassociated with the first user is not a member of the social networkingsystem, a further network communication comprising an invitation to jointhe social networking system.
 18. The method of claim 15, wherein theparticipant is included in a list of participants authorized toparticipate in the conversation.
 19. The method of claim 15, wherein thesocial networking system is LinkedIn®.
 20. The method of claim 15,wherein the generated network communication comprises a selectable linkoperable to allow the participant to block the first user from sendingfurther network communications to the participant.